It was the old story of woman comforting man in his affliction; the
trouble in this instance appearing in the shape of a long blue envelope
addressed to himself in his own handwriting. Poor young poet! He had
no more appetite for eggs and bacon that morning; he pushed aside even
his coffee, and buried his head in his hands.
"Back again!" he groaned. "Always back, and back, and back, and these
are my last verses: the best I have written. I felt sure that these
would have been taken!"
"So they will be, some day," comforted the woman. "You have only to be
patient and go on trying. I'll re-type the first and last pages, and
iron out the dog's ears, and we will send it off on a fresh journey.
Why don't you try the Pinnacle Magazine? There ought to be a chance
there. They published some awful bosh last month."
The poet was roused to a passing indignation.
"As feeble as mine, I suppose! Oh, well, if even you turn against me,
it is time I gave up the struggle."
"Even you" was not in this instance a wife, but "only a sister," so
instead of falling on her accuser's neck with explanations and caresses,
she helped herself to a second cup of coffee, and replied coolly-"Silly thing! You know quite well that I do nothing of the sort, so
don't be high-falutin. I should not encourage you to waste time if I
did not know that you were going to succeed in the end. I don't think;
I know!"
"How?" queried the poet. "How?" He had heard the reason a dozen times
before, but he longed to hear it again. He lifted his face from his
hands--an ideal face for a poet; clean-cut, sensitive, with deep-set
eyes, curved lips, and a finely-modelled chin. "How do you know?"
"I feel!" replied the critic simply. "Of course, I am prejudiced in
favour of your work; but that would not make it haunt me as if it were
my own. I can see your faults; you are horribly uneven. There are
lines here and there which make me cold; lines which are put in for the
sake of the rhyme, and nothing more; but there are other bits,"--the
girl's eyes turned towards the window, and gazed dreamily into
space--"which sing in my heart! When it is fine, when it is dark, when
I am glad, when I am in trouble, why do your lines come unconsciously
into my mind, as if they expressed my own feelings better than I can do
it myself? That's not rhyme--that's poetry! It is the real thing; not
pretence."