"The precious fount of verse, dear maid." "No!" she whispered violently. "I'm half drowned already. Words, smells, sounds, attitudes, rocking-chairs--and candles profaning the sunshine--I am suffocated, I need more air, more sense and less incense--less sound, less art----" "Less--_what_?" he gasped. "Less art!--what you call 'l'arr'!--yes, I've said it; I'm sick! sick of art! I know what I require now." And as he remained agape in shocked silence: "I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Frawley, but I also require less of you.... So much less that father will scarcely expect me to play any more accompaniments to your 'necklaces of precious tones'--so much less that the minimum of my interest in you vanishes to absolute negation.... So I shall not marry you." "Aphrodite--are--are you mad?" Her sulky red mouth was mute. Meanwhile the poet's rich, resonant voice filled the studio with an agreeable and rambling monotone: "Verse is a vehicle for expression; expression is a vehicle for verse; sound, in itself, is so subtly saturated with meaning that it requires nothing of added logic for its vindication. Sound, therefore, is sense, modified by the mysterious portent of tone. Thank you for understanding, thank you for a thought--very, very precious, a thought beautiful." He smeared the air with inverted thumb and smiled at Mr. Frawley, who rose, somewhat agitated, and, crooking one lank arm behind his back, made a mechanical pinch at an atmospheric atom. "If--if you do that again--if you dare to recite those verses about me, I shall go! I tell you I can't stand any more," breathed Aphrodite between her clenched teeth. The young man cast his large and rather sickly eyes upon her. For a moment he was in doubt, but belief in the witchery of sound prevailed, for he had yet to meet a being insensible to the "music of the soul," and so with a fond and fatuous murmur he pinched the martyred atmosphere once more, and began, mousily: ALL A tear a year My pale desire requires, And that is all. Enlacements weary, passion tires, Kisses are cinder-ghosts of fires Smothered at birth with mortal earth; And that is all. A year of fear My pallid soul desires And that is all-- Terror of bliss and dread of happiness, A subtle need of sorrow and distress And you to weep one tear, no more, no less, And that is all I ask-- And that is all. People were breathing thickly; the poet unaffectedly distilled the suggested tear; it was a fat tear; it ran smoothly down his nose, twinkled, trembled, and fell. Aphrodite's features had become tense; she half rose, hesitated. Then, as the young man in the stock turned his invalid's eyes in her direction and began: Oh, sixteen tears In sixteen years---- she transfixed her hat with one nervous gesture sprang to her feet, turned, and vanished through the door.