"Why, of course it is, as you've got ears and HAVE heard them!" said Cicely, with a laugh--"Don't ask 'is it possible' to do a thing when you've done it! That's not logical,--and men do pride themselves on their logic, though I could never find out why. Do you like cowslips?" And she thrust the great bunch she had gathered up against his nose--"There's a wordless poem for you!" Inhaling the fresh fine odour of the field blossoms, he still looked at her in amazement, she meeting his gaze without the least touch of embarrassment. "You can walk home with me, if you like!"--she observed condescendingly--"I won't promise to ask you into the Manor, because perhaps Maryllia won't want you, and I daresay she won't approve of my picking up a young man in the woods. But it's rather fun to talk to a poet,--I've never met one before. They don't come out in Paris. They live in holes and corners, drinking absinthe to keep off hunger." "Alas, that is so!" and Adderley began to keep pace with the thin black-stockinged legs that were already starting off through the long grass and flowers--"The arts are at a discount nowadays. Poetry is the last thing people want to read." "Then why do you write it?" and Cicely turned a sharp glance of enquiry upon him--"What's the good?" "There you offer me a problem Miss--er--Miss---" "Bourne,"--finished Cicely--"Don't fight with my name--it's quite easy--though I don't know how I got it. I ought to have been a Tre or a Pol-I was born in Cornwall. Never mind that,--go on with the 'problem.'" "True--go on with the problem,"--said Julian vaguely, taking off his hat and raking his hair with his fingers as he was wont to do when at all puzzled--"The problem is--'why do I write poetry if nobody wants to read it'--and 'what's the good'? Now, in the first place, I will reply that I am not sure I write 'poetry.' I try to express my identity in rhythm and rhyme--but after all, that expression of myself may be prose, and wholly without interest to the majority. You see? I put it to you quite plainly. Then as to 'what's the good?'--I would argue 'what's the bad?' So far, I live quite harmlessly. From the unexpected demise of an uncle whom I never saw, I have a life-income of sixty pounds a year. I am happy on that--I desire no more than that. On that I seek to evolve myself into SOMETHING--from a nonentity into shape and substance--and if, as is quite possible, there can be no 'good,' there may be a certain less of 'bad' than might otherwise chance to me. What think you?" Cicely surveyed him scrutinisingly.