"Your Russian must be very idiomatic. I found it hard in places." Overcome with delight, he looked at her and bent towards her. "Mrs. Borisoff told me you had learnt. I know what that means--learning Russian in England, out of books. I began to do it at Ewell--do you remember?" "Yes, I remember very well. Have you written anything besides these two articles?" "Written--yes, but not published. I have written all sorts of things." His voice shook. "Even--verse." He repented the word as soon as it was uttered. Again his eyes could not move towards hers. "I know you have," said Irene, in the voice of one who smiles. "I have never been sure that you knew it--that you received those verses." "To tell you the truth, I didn't know how to acknowledge them. I never received the dedication of a poem, before or since, and in my awkwardness I put off my thanks till it was too late to send them. But I remember the lines; I think they were beautiful. Shall you ever include them in a volume?" "I wrote no more, I am no poet. Yet if you had given a word of praise"--he laughed, as one does when emotion is too strong--"I should have written on and on, with a glorious belief in myself." "Perhaps it was as well, then, that I said nothing. Poetry must come of itself, without praise--don't you think?" "Yes, I lived it--or tried to live it--instead of putting it into metre." "That's exactly what I once heard my father say about himself. And he called it consuming his own smoke." Piers could not but join in her quiet laugh, yet he had never felt a moment less opportune for laughter. As if to prove that she purposely changed the note of their dialogue, Irene reached a volume from the table, and said in the most matter-of-fact voice: "Here's a passage of Tolstoi that I can't make out. Be my professor, please. First of all, let me hear you read it aloud for the accent." The lesson continued till Helen entered the room again. Irene so willed it. CHAPTER XXXVI She sat by her open window, which looked over the dale to the long high ridge of moors, softly drawn against a moonlit sky. Far below sounded the rushing Ure, and at moments there came upon the fitful breeze a deeper music, that of the falls at Aysgarth, miles away. It was an hour since she had bidden good-night to Helen, and two hours or more since all else in the Castle and in the cottages had been still and dark. She loved this profound quiet, this solitude guarded by the eternal powers of nature. She loved the memories and imaginings borne upon the stillness of these grey old towers.