In this almost epigrammatic manner she concealed from him—and almost from herself—that she had no instructions to give him; nor was she aware that she had employed an instinctive device of no great novelty. Self-protection inspires it wherever superiority must be preserved; it has high official and military usages, but is most frequently in operation upon the icier intellectual summits. Yet, like a sword with a poisonous hilt, it always avenges its victim, and he who employs it will be irritable for some time afterward—he is really irritated with himself, but naturally prefers to think the irritation is with the stupidity that stumped him. Thus Muriel departed abruptly, clashing the gate for all her expression of farewell, and left startled young Mr. Mears standing there, a figure of obvious pathos. She went indoors, and, having ascended to her own room, presently sat down and engaged herself with writing materials. Little shadows of despondency played upon her charming forehead as she wrote: “Life is so terrible! Far off—far, far—oh, infinitely distant—oh, Where far-flung fleets and argosies Of nobler thoughts abound Than those I find around me In this crass, provincial town, I must go! For I am lonely here, One lonely, lonely little figure Upbearing still one white, white light invisible. How could those see whose thoughts are all Of marts and churches, dancing, and the links?” She paused to apply the blotter upon a tiny area of ink, oozed from the pen to her forefinger, which had pressed too ardently, being tense with creative art; and having thus broken the spell of composition, she glanced frowningly out of the window beside her desk. Across the way, she could see Renfrew Mears sitting under the walnut tree in his own yard. He was not looking toward her, but leaned back in a wicker chair, and to a sympathetic observation his attitude and absent skyward gaze might have expressed a contemplative bafflement. However, this was not Muriel’s interpretation, for she wrote: “Across the street, ignoble in content, Under a dusty walnut tree, A young man flanneled sits, And dreams his petty burgher dreams Of burghers’ petty offices. He’s nothing. So, lonely in the savourless place, I find No comrade for my white, white light, No single soul that understands, Or glimpses just, my meanings.”