that same afternoon. As he took his leave, he put the paper In Lufa's
hand, saying,

"You will find there what I have said about the poem."




CHAPTER XVII.


HIS BOOK.

I need hardly say he found his first lonely evening dull. He was not yet
capable of looking beneath the look of anything. He felt cabined,
cribbed, confined. His world-clothing came too near him. From the
flowing robes of a park, a great house, large rooms, wide
staircases--with plenty of air and space, color, softness, fitness,
completeness, he found himself in the worn, tight, shabby garment of a
cheap London lodging! But Walter, far from being a wise man, was not
therefore a fool; he was not one whom this world can not teach, and who
has therefore to be sent to some idiot asylum in the next, before sense
can be got into him, or, rather, out of him. No man is a fool, who,
having work to do, sets himself to do it, and Walter did. He had begun a
poem to lead the van of a volume, of which the rest was nearly ready:
into it he now set himself to weave a sequel to her drama, from the
point where she had left the story. Every hour he could spare from
drudgery he devoted to it--urged by the delightful prospect of letting
Lufa see what he could do. Gaining facility with his stanza as he went
on, the pleasure of it grew, and more than comforted his loneliness.