"Oh Aphrodite, queen of dread desire! By all the dreams that throng Love's golden ways, By all the honied vows thy votary pays, By sacrificial wine, and holy fire! Thou who hast made my heart thy living lyre, Hast thou no gift for me, nor any grace? Why hast thou turned the light of Love's sweet face From me, the sweetest singer of Love's choir?" "For songs that charm the long ambrosial years The gods bring many gifts, and mine shall be-- Immortal life in mortal agony-- Vain longing, fanned by wingèd hopes and fears To inextinguishable flame--and tears Bitter as death, salt as the Lesbian Sea." Her breast rose and fell with the lines; by this time she was educated up to their feeling. "Who was Sappho, and what did she do?--I know, but I've forgotten," asked a voice in the crowd. "Oh, the woman who threw herself at the other fellow's head, you know, who naturally didn't appreciate the compliment." Audrey was not intelligent enough to refrain from the inward comment, "How singularly inappropriate! I should have said Katherine was about the last person in the world to----" She turned round and found herself face to face with the poet. Knowles had been wandering through the crowd with evasive eyes, successfully dodging the ladies of his acquaintance, while his air of abstraction took all quality of offence from the unerring precision of his movements. But when he saw Miss Craven he stopped. He had an inkling of the truth, and respected her feelings too much to slight her while Wyndham's marriage was still a topic of the hour. "Not bad for the boy, that!" said he, smiling gently at Sappho. "He's coming out, isn't he?" "So are you, I think--in a new line too!" "Ah--er--not quite a new one. I've been taken that way before." She was about to make some pretty speech when they were joined by Ted, who had not noticed Audrey. His forehead puckered slightly when he saw her, but that was no doubt from sympathy with her probable embarrassment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was indifferent to the touch of the small hand that had tried to mould his destiny. If the truth must be told, in the flush of his success Ted had found out that his passion for Audrey was only the flickering of the flame on the altar dedicated to eternal Art. He listened to her compliments without that sense of apotheosis which (however low he rated it) her criticism had been wont to produce. "Don't let's be seen looking at it any longer," he said at last; "let's go and pretend to get excited about some other fellow's work."