THE DIVINE FIRE by MAY SINCLAIR Author of _Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson_, _Two Sides of a Question_, etc. etc. 1904 Mr. OWEN SEAMAN in _Punch_ says:-- "Miss Sinclair is always quietly sure of herself. That is why she will not be hurried, but moves through her gradual scheme with so leisured a serenity; why her style, fluent and facile, never forces its natural eloquence; why her humour plays with a diffused light over all her work and seldom needs the advertisement of scintillating epigrams. Judged by almost every standard to which a comedy like this should be referred, I find her book, 'The Divine Fire' the most remarkable that I have read for many years." BY THE SAME AUTHOR _TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION_ CONTENTS BOOK I DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE BOOK II LUCIA'S WAY BOOK III THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE BOOK IV THE MAN HIMSELF BOOK I DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE CHAPTER I Horace Jewdwine had made the most remarkable of his many remarkable discoveries. At least he thought he had. He could not be quite sure, which was his excuse for referring it to his cousin Lucia, whose instinct (he would not call it judgement) in these matters was infallible--strangely infallible for so young a girl. What, he wondered, would she say to Savage Keith Rickman? On Saturday, when he first came down into Devonshire, he would have been glad to know. But to-day, which was a Tuesday, he was not interested in Rickman. To eat strawberries all morning; to lie out in the hammock all afternoon, under the beach-tree on the lawn of Court House; to let the peace of the old green garden sink into him; to look at Lucia and forget, utterly forget, about his work (the making of discoveries), that was what he wanted. But Lucia wanted to talk, and to talk about Rickman earnestly as if he were a burning question, when even lying in the hammock Jewdwine was so hot that it bothered him to talk at all. He was beginning to be sorry that he had introduced him--the exciting topic, that is to say, not the man; for Rickman you could scarcely introduce, not at any rate to Lucia Harden. "Well, Lucia?" He pronounced her name in the Italian manner, "Loo-chee-a," with a languid stress on the vowels, and his tone conveyed a certain weary but polite forbearance. Lucia herself, he noticed, had an ardent look, as if a particularly interesting idea had just occurred to her. He wished it hadn't. An idea of Lucia's would commit him to an opinion of his own; and at the moment Jewdwine was not prepared to abandon himself to anything so definite and irretrievable. He had not yet made up his mind about Rickman, and did not want to make it up now. Certainty was impossible owing to his somewhat embarrassing acquaintance with the man. That, again, was where Lucia had come in. Her vision of him would be free and undisturbed by any suggestion of his bodily presence.