The rising young lawyer was a clever advocate, and he had never striven longer and harder to win a cause. When his triumph was secured Agnes could not quite dismiss the subject. It haunted her like a wan ghost, with threatening beck and ominous eye. Once, but a month before their wedding day, they were speaking of George Eliot’s singular marriage with a man young enough to be her son, and an abrupt change fell upon Agnes’ visage—a shade of painful doubt and misgiving. “Dinah Maria Mulock, too!” she exclaimed. “And Mme. de Staël! Elizabeth Browning’s husband was some months younger than she. Then, there are Mrs. —— and Mrs. ——” naming two prominent living American authors. “How very singular! There must be some occult reason for what we cannot set down as coincidences. It looks like fatality—or” hesitatingly—“infatuation.” “Rather,” said Barton in gentle seriousness, for her perturbation was too real for playful rallying—“attribute such cases to the truth of the eternal youthfulness of genius. These men see in the faces and forms of the women they woo, the beautiful minds that will never know age or change. Time salutes, instead of challenging those high in favor with the king.” “Do you know,” Agnes said, her slim white hand threading the brown curls of the head she thought more beautiful than that of Antinous—“that you will never say a more graceful thing than that? You are more truly a poet than I. Don’t disclaim, for I am not a bard at all. When I drop into poetry _à la_ Wegg, it is _not_ ‘in the light of a friend.’ When I am in the dark or at best in a half-light, sorry or weary, or lonely of heart, my thoughts take rhythmic shape. They are only homely little crickets, creeping out in the twilight to sing by the fire that is beginning to gather ashes. I am a born story-teller, but I deserve no credit for that. Something within me that is not myself tells the stories so fast that I can hardly write them down as they are made. I am no genius, dear. Don’t marry me with that impression. I wish for your sake that I were. How gloriously proud you would be of me!” “I am ‘gloriously proud’ of you now!” He said it in fervent sincerity. “If you have genius, don’t develop it. I can hardly keep you in sight as it is.”