"Exactly," said Bill, "re-creation. To create anew--to refresh. That is, perhaps, the mission of poetry, and applies to the poet as well as to his audience. Poetry is, for me, the language of dreams: the ceaseless search for beauty: something common to all men. For the peasant dreams as well as the inventor: the man of science, as well as the financier and the college professor who thinks of education as something bigger than is contained between the covers of a text-book. And from the soil, the shop, the laboratory, the office and the school-room great songs have been sung,--not all of them in words!" "The financier dreams?" said Wright, incredulously. "Not much!" "If he didn't, he wouldn't be where he is," answered Bill. "If the engineer didn't dream, the bridges would not be swung over the boiling rivers of strange countries, or the railroad tracks laid through the virgin jungle and the ageless desert--" I had a curious sensation, listening to that even, low voice. It was as if, for the first time, I had heard Richard Warren speak. "I guess you're right," said the other man, after a moment of silence. "Of course I am," answered Bill. "And so, the poets dream dreams too, and try to interpret other men's dreams: those which are built in brick and stone: materialized into steel: founded in a huge office building. The grim reality of war stands for dreams sometimes. Many inarticulate poets have gone singing to the bayonet thrust. Once, a handful of people dreamed of Liberty; and the United States was their expression of that dream." Someone drew a deep breath. It was I, perhaps. Bill looked over at me, shaking the ash from his cigarette. And for a moment I forgot the feud between us: forgot that we were very soon to go our separate ways: forgot a number of things that I had known and I remembered only the songs that Richard Warren had sung for the world. "It was a dream, too," said Mercedes, "which made Cuba free!" We were grave, as, together, we four had never been through the sunny, idle days. I had the oddest feeling that between us all lay something unspoken, unnamed, intangible, as if, too, for the moment, we were closely knit together, completely _en rapport_. "Well," said Wright easily, swinging the conversation back to its starting place, "It's all very well to talk. And perhaps you are more serious than I, Bill. Mind, I don't altogether admit it--but you tune your lyre to a deeper key than I do mine. I can't claim to be a poet: a versifier, yes...." "You do yourself an injustice," I said warmly, for Wright's somewhat exotic pen-name had long since come into my knowledge and I had seen some of his magazine verse. "You've a gift," said my husband, "not lightly to be disregarded. But you're too versatile--you paint better than you write, and there's a lot in the old parable of the talents. And, by George, you've no honest right to your talent if, in some way, you do not use it for the good of your fellow-men."