"So did Moses," said Ideala. "If you really want to justify 'The Passion of Delysle' I can help you. You see she was dreadfully badly treated by her friends, poor thing! and her marriage after all was no marriage, because she loved another man all the time; and your husband isn't properly your husband if you don't love him, love being the only possible sanctification--in fact, the only true marriage. And then her lover, thinking he had lost her, became a priest, and vows made under a misapprehension like that cannot be binding--it would be too much to expect us to suffer always for such mistakes. And then the world--but we all know how cruel the world is! And appearances were sadly against them, poor things! No one would ever have believed that they had stayed out all night to discuss their religious experiences. Suicide is shocking, of course; but still, when people are driven to it like that, we can only be sorry for them, and hope they will never do it again!" She nestled back more comfortably on her couch, and then continued in an altered tone: "But it is appalling to think of the quantity of machine-made verses like those that are imposed on the public year by year, verses the mere result of much reading and writing, without a scrap of inspiration in them, and as far removed from even schoolboy efforts of genius, as an oleograph is from an oil painting. Poets are as rare now as prophets, and inspiration has left us for our sins. I think any fairly educated one of us, with a tolerable memory and the habit of composition, could write that 'Passion of Delysle' again in half-an-hour." "Oh, could they, though!" said Ralph, the son of the house. "I dare bet anything you couldn't do it yourself in twice the time." "Dare you?" she answered, with a little smile. "Well, to adopt your elegant phraseology, Master Ralph, I bet I will produce the same story, with the same conclusion, but a different moral, in an hour--since you allow me twice the time I named--if I may be permitted to write it in blank verse, that is, and of course, with the understanding that what I write is not intended to be anything but mere versified prose." "Done with you!" cried Ralph. "Hush--h--h!" his mother exclaimed, deprecatingly. "Betting, and before the Bishop, too!" "What the Bishop don't know will do him no harm, Ma," said the youth in a stage whisper. "Sit down, Ideala, and begin. It's ten minutes to ten now." The Bishop slept serenely; conversation flagged; and Ideala wrote steadily for about three-quarters of an hour; then she gathered up the manuscript, rose from the table, and returned to her old seat. "'The Passion of Delysle' has become 'The Choice,'" she said. "Will you read it for me, Mr. Lloyd? I think it should have that advantage, at least." Charlie took the manuscript, and read: