They looked at each other for a little while. Then he took her hand, prepared in turn for self-denial. "The _Household Review_ wants me to 'do' a series on famous English bishops," he reported, humbly. "I had meant to refuse, because it would all have to be dull High-Church twaddle. And the _English Gentleman_ wants some rather outrageous lying done in defense of the Corn Laws. You would not despise me too much--would you, Mildred?--if I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of hackwork of that sort available to keep us going until more solvent days, when I shall have opportunity to write something quite worthy of you." "For the present, dear, it would be much more sensible, I think, to 'do' the bishops and the Corn Laws. You see, that kind of thing pays very well, and is read by the best people; whereas poetry, of course-- But you can always come back to the verse-making, you know----" "If you ever let me," he said, with a flash of prescience. "And I don't believe you mean to let me. You are your mother's daughter, after all! Nefarious woman, you are planning, already, to make a responsible member of society out of me! and you will do it, ruthlessly! Such is to be Prince Fribble's actual burial--in his own private carriage, with a receipted tax-bill in his pocket!" "What nonsense you poets talk!" the girl observed. But to him, forebodingly, that familiar statement seemed to lack present application. THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS "_In JOHN CHARTERIS appeared a man with an inborn sense of the supreme interest and the overwhelming emotional and spiritual relevancy of human life as it is actually and obscurely lived; a man with unmistakable creative impulses and potentialities; a man who, had he lived in a more mature and less self-deluding community--a community that did not so rigorously confine its interest in facts to business, and limit its demands upon art to the supplying of illusions--might humbly and patiently have schooled his gifts to the service of his vision. . . . As it was, he accepted defeat and compromised half-heartedly with commercialism._" And men unborn will read of Heloise, And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semele, When none remembers your name's melody Or rhymes your name, enregistered with these. And will my name wake moods as amorous As that of Abelard or Launcelot Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?-- Time's laughter answers, who accords to us More gracious fields, wherein we harvest--what? JOHN CHARTERIS. _Torrismond's Envoi, in Ashtaroth's Lackey_. THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS "Our distinguished alumnus," after being duly presented as such, had with vivacity delivered much the usual sort of Commencement Address. Yet John Charteris was in reality a trifle fagged.