My love, I detest artifice. Poetry is a profession.«
    »Our poets would prove to you ...«
    »As I have often observed, Clara, I am no poet.«
    »I have not accused you, Willoughby.«
    »No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life would supply
material, I can assure you, my love. My conscience is not entirely at rest.
Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least wilfully
guilty. You have heard of a Miss Durham?«
    »I have heard - yes - of her.«
    »She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape some
blame. An instance of the difference between myself and the world, now. The
world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her.«
    »That was generous, Willoughby.«
    »Stay. I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, I, under a sense of
honour, acting under a sense of honour, would have carried my engagement
through.«
    »What had you done?«
    »The story is long, dating from an early day, in the downy antiquity of my
youth, as Vernon says.«
    »Mr. Whitford says that?«
    »One of old Vernon's odd sayings. It's a story of an early fascination.«
    »Papa tells me Mr. Whitford speaks at times with wise humour.«
    »Family considerations - the lady's health among other things; her position
in the calculations of relatives - intervened. Still there was the fascination.
I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy.«
    »Is it at an end?«
    »Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at an end, or could I have opened
my inmost heart to you! Could I have spoken of myself so unreservedly that in
part you know me as I know myself! Oh! but would it have been possible to
enclose you with myself in that intimate union? so secret, unassailable!«
    »You did not speak to her as you speak to me?«
    »In no degree.«
    »What could have ...!« Clara checked the murmured exclamation.
    Sir Willoughby's expoundings on his latest of texts would have poured forth,
had not a footman stepped across the lawn to inform him that his builder was in
the laboratory and requested permission to consult with him.
    Clara's plea of a horror of a