Afterwards he took Corydon for a walk. They climbed the hill where he came to battle with the stormwinds, and to watch the sunsets and the moon rising over the lake. And then they went down into the glen, where the mountain streamlet tumbled. Here had been wood-sorrel, and a carpet of the white trillium; and now there was adder’s tongue, quaint and saucy, and columbine, and the pale dusty corydalis. There was soft new moss underfoot, and one walked as if in a temple. Thyrsis pointed out a seat beside a deep bubbling pool. “Here’s where I sit and write,” he said. “And how comes the book?” asked Corydon. “Oh, I’m hammering at it--that’s the best I can say.” “What is it?” “Why--it’s a story. I suppose it’ll be called a romance, though I don’t like the word.” Corydon pondered for a moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to be writing anything romantic,” she said. Thyrsis, occupied with his own thoughts, observed, “I might call it a revolutionary romance.” “What is it about?” He hesitated. “It happens in the middle ages,” he said. “There’s a minstrel and a princess.” “That sounds interesting,” said Corydon. Now in the period of pregnancy the artist’s mood is one of secretiveness. But afterwards there comes a time for promulgation and rejoicing; and already there had been hints of this in the mind of Thyrsis. The great secret that he was cherishing--what would be the world’s reception of it? And now suddenly a wild idea came to him. He had heard somewhere that it is the women who read fiction. And was not Corydon a perfect specimen of the average middle-class young lady, and therefore of that mysterious potentiality, “the public”, to which he must appeal? Why not see what she would think of it? He took the plunge. “Would you like me to read it to you?” he asked. “Why, certainly,” she replied, and then added, gently, “If it wouldn’t be a desecration.” “Oh, no,” said Thyrsis. “You see, when it’s been printed, all sorts of people will read it.” So he went back to the house and brought the precious manuscript; and he placed Corydon in the seat of inspiration, and sat beside her and read. In many ways this was a revolutionary romance. Thyrsis had not spent any of his time delving into other people’s books for “local color”; he was not relying for his effects upon gabardines and hauberks, and a sprinkling of “Yea, sires,” and “prithees.” His castle was but the vaguely outlined background of a stage upon which living hearts wrought out their passions. One saw the banquet-hall, with its tapestries and splendor, and the master of it, the man of force; there were swift scenes that gave one a glimpse of the age-long state of things-- “Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.”