being, through which his
strength poured out to her. She was aware only of the strength, and not of the
medium, and when she seemed most carried away by what he had written, in reality
she had been carried away by something quite foreign to it - by a thought,
terrible and perilous, that had formed itself unsummoned in her brain. She had
caught herself wondering what marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of
the waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her. It was unmaidenly.
It was not like her. She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had
lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full significance
of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the grossnesses that intrude
upon the relations of queens and knights. She had been asleep, always, and now
life was thundering imperatively at all her doors. Mentally she was in a panic
to shoot the bolts and drop the bars into place, while wanton instincts urged
her to throw wide her portals and bid the deliciously strange visitor to enter
in.
    Martin waited with satisfaction for her verdict. He had no doubt of what it
would be, and he was astounded when he heard her say: -
    »It is beautiful.«
    »It is beautiful,« she repeated, with emphasis, after a pause.
    Of course it was beautiful; but there was something more than mere beauty in
it, something more stingingly splendid which had made beauty its handmaiden. He
sprawled silently on the ground, watching the grisly form of a great doubt
rising before him. He had failed. He was inarticulate. He had seen one of the
greatest things in the world, and he had not expressed it.
    »What did you think of the -« He hesitated, abashed at his first attempt to
use a strange word. »Of the motif?« he asked.
    »It was confused,« she answered. »That is my only criticism in the large
way. I followed the story, but there seemed so much else. It is too wordy. You
clog the action by introducing so much extraneous material.«
    »That was the major motif,« he hurriedly explained, »the big underrunning
motif, the cosmic and universal thing. I tried to make it keep time with the
story itself, which was only superficial after all. I was on the right scent,
but I guess I did it badly. I did not succeed in suggesting what I was driving
at. But I'll learn in time.«
    She did not follow him. She was a