The rolling, copious phrases conveyed little meaning to her, but she liked the music of them. There was something to make a sophisticated onlooker laugh in the sight of this young, pure creature, with her strong, slow-growing passions, her strong, slow-growing intellect, bending over the diffuse, unreserved, unrestrained pages. She came at last to one poem, the _Triumph of Time_, which seemed to have more meaning than the others, and which arrested her attention, though even this was only comprehensible at intervals. She read on and on:-- “I have given no man of any fruit to eat; I have trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine. Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet, This wild new growth of the corn and vine, This wine and bread without lees or leaven, We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven, Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet, One splendid spirit, your soul and mine. “In the change of years, in the coil of things, In the clamour and rumour of life to be, We, drinking love at the furthest springs, Covered with love as a covering tree, We had grown as gods, as the gods above, Filled from the heart to the lips with love, Held fast in his arms, clothed warm with his wings, O love, my love, had you loved but me! “We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen Grief collapse as a thing disproved, Death consume as a thing unclean. Twin halves of a perfect heart, made fast Soul to soul while the years fell past; Had you loved me once, as you have not loved; Had the chance been with us that has not been.” The slow tears gathered in her eyes, and forcing themselves forward fell down her cheeks. Then there was, after all, something to be said for feelings which had not their basis in material relationships. They were not mere phantasmagoria conjured up by silly people, by sentimental people, by women. Clever men, men of distinction, recognized them, treated them as of paramount importance. The practical, if not the theoretical, teaching of her life had been to treat as absurd any close or strong feeling which had not its foundations in material interests. There must be no undue giving away of one’s self in friendship, in the pursuit of ideas, in charity, in a public cause. Only gushing fools did that sort of thing, and their folly generally met with its reward. And this teaching, sensible enough in its way, had been accepted without question by the clannish, exclusive, conservative soul of Judith. Where your interests lie, there should lie your duties; and where your duties, your feelings. A wholesome doctrine no doubt, if not one that will always meet the far-reaching and complicated needs of a human soul.