‘Ah!’ said Cara, drawing a long breath: the poetry had got into her head--tears were coming into her eyes, filling them and then ebbing back again somehow, for she would not shed them. She had no thought but for ‘Elaine,’ yet felt somehow, as youth has a way of doing, a soft comparison between herself and Elaine, a wavering of identity--was it that she too was capable of that ‘love of the moth for the star?’ Edward watching her, felt that there was more poetry in Cara’s blue eyes than in the Laureate; and no shame to Mr. Tennyson. Is it not in that tender emotion, that swelling of the heart to all lofty and sorrowful, and beautiful things, that poetry takes its rise? Cara being truly the poet’s vision, even to her own touched and melting consciousness, was all Elaine in her young lover’s eyes. ‘But, my dear, my dear!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘if poor Elaine had only loved someone like herself, some young knight that could respond to her and make her happy, oh, how much better it would have been! It makes my heart ache: for Lancelot, you know, never could have loved her; though indeed I don’t know why not, for men being middle-aged is no guarantee,’ Miss Cherry added, with a little sigh, ‘against their making fools of themselves for young girls; but it would have been far more natural and happier for her had she set her heart on someone of her own age, who would have made her----’ ‘Oh,’ cried Cara, ‘don’t say it over again! made her happy! did Elaine want to be made happy? She wanted what was the highest and noblest, not asking what was to become of her. What did it matter about her? It was enough that she found out Lancelot without even knowing his name. I suppose such a thing might be,’ said Cara, sinking her voice in poetic awe, ‘as that Lancelot might come to one’s very door, and one never know him. That would be worse, far worse, than dying for his sake.’ ‘Oh, Cara, Lancelot was not such a very fine character after all,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and though I am not so clever about poetry as you are, I have seen many a young girl taken in with an older man, who seemed everything that was noble, but had a very sad past behind him that nobody knew of; but after they are married, it is always found out. I would rather, far rather, see _you_ with a young man of your own age.’