Armorel turned over the pages and began to read them. Strange! How could a man so ponderous, so pompous in his conceit, so dogmatic, so self-conscious, write such pretty, easy-flowing numbers? The metres fitted the subject; the rhymes were apt, the cadence true, the verses tripped light and graceful like a maiden dancing. 'How could such a man,' she cried, 'get a touch so light? It is truly wonderful.' 'I told you so, dear. He is altogether wonderful.' She went on reading. Presently she cried out, 'Why! he writes like a woman. Only a woman could have written these lines.' She read them out. 'It is a woman's hand, and a woman's way of thinking.' 'That shows his genius. No one except Alec--or a woman--could have said just that thing in just that manner.' Armorel closed the volume. 'I think,' she said, 'that I like a man to write like a man and a woman like a woman.' 'Then,' said Zoe, 'how is a novelist to make a woman talk?' 'He makes his women talk like women if he can. But when he speaks himself it must be with the voice of a man. In these poems it is the poet who speaks, not any character, man or woman.' 'You will like the poems better as you read them. They will grow upon you. And you will find the poet himself--not a woman, but a man--in his verses. It helps one so much to understand the verses when you know the poet. I think I could almost understand Browning if I had ever known him. Think of Alec when you read his verses.' 'Yes,' said Armorel, still without enthusiasm. 'You said we were talking about nothing else, dear,' Zoe went on. 'I talk so much of him because I respect and revere him so much. I have known Alec a long time'--she lay back with her head turned from her companion, talking softly into the fire, as if she was communing with herself. 'He is, though you do not understand it yet, a man of the most highly strung and sensitive nature. The true reason why he talks ponderously--as you call it, Armorel--is that he is conscious of the traps into which this very sensitiveness of his may lead him: for instance, he may say, before persons unworthy of his confidence, things which they would most likely misunderstand. It is simply wicked to cast pearls before swine. A poet, more than any other man, must be quite sure of his audience before he gives himself away. I assure you, when Alec feels himself alone with his intimates--a very little circle--his talk is brilliant.' 'We are unlucky, then,' said Armorel, still without enthusiasm. 'Another thing may make him seem dull. He is always preoccupied, always thinking about his work: his mind is overcharged.' 'I thought he was always in society--a great diner-out?' 'He is. Society brings him relief. The inanities of social intercourse rest his brain. Without this rest he would be crushed.' 'I see,' said Armorel, coldly.