She slowly shook her head. 'That's absurd, Henry. You're particularly the kind. You'll never be able to live without idealising some woman.' 'I tell you they're nothing to me. My life is different now. I've changed. I've put money--a lot of money--into the _Gleaner_. It means big responsibilities. You've no idea----' 'If I hadn't, seen you writing,' she mused aloud.... 'No, Henry. You won't change. You'll grow, but you won't change. You're going to write, Henry. And you'll always write straight at a woman.' 'No! No!' Henry was sputtering. He appeared to be struggling. 'Life means work to me. I'm through with----' She took down the _Tristan_ score from the piano and turned the pages in her lap. 'Love is the great vitaliser, Henry,' she said. 'No--it's the mind. Thinking. We have to learn to think clearly--objectively.' 'Objectively? No. Not you. And I'm glad, in a way. Because I know we're going to be proud of you. But it's love that makes the world go round. They don't teach you that in the colleges, but it's the truth... Take Wagner--and _Tristan_. He wrote it straight at a woman. And it's the greatest opera ever written. And the greatest love story. It's that because he was terribly in love when he wrote it. Do you Suppose, for one minute that if Wagner had never seen Mathilde Wesendonck we should have had _Tristan?_' She paused, pursed her lips, studied the book with eyes that seemed to grow misty, then looked up at Humphrey. He--tall, angular, very sober--met her gaze; then his swarthy face wrinkled up about the eyes and he hurriedly drew his cob pipe from his pocket and began filling it. Henry stared at the rug; traced out the pattern with his stick. He couldn't answer this last point, because he had never heard of Mathilde Wesendonck. And as he was supposed to be 'musical' it seemed best to keep quiet. He made an excuse of some sort and went out for a walk. Down by the lake he thought of several strong arguments. Mildred was wrong. She had to be wrong. For he had cut girls out. It was like Mildred to speak out in that curiously direct way. She was fond of Henry. And she had divined, out of her various, probably rather vivid contacts with life, certain half-truths that were not accepted in Sunbury. I think she saw Henry pretty clearly, saw that he was driven by an emotional dynamo that was to bring him suffering and success both.... Mildred, of course, never really belonged in a small town. It was at the close of the following afternoon that Henry came in and found Humphrey's long figure stretched out on the window-seat--he was smoking, of course--of all things, blowing endless rings up at the curtains Mildred had made and hung for him. His dark skin looked gray. There were deep lines in his face. He couldn't speak at first. But he stared at Henry.