The words that Mary Horneck had spoken and the look there was in her eyes at the same moment had yet to be explained. He seated himself at his desk with his hand to his head, his elbow resting on a sheet of paper placed ready for his pen. After half-an-hour's thought his hand went mechanically to his tray of pens. Picking one up with a sigh, he began to write. Verse after verse appeared upon the paper--the love-song of a man who feels that love is shut out from his life for evermore, but whose only consolation in life is love. After an hour's fluent writing he laid down the pen and once again rested his head on his hand. He had not the courage to read what he had written. His desk was full of such verses, written with unaffected sincerity when every one around him was engaged in composing verses which were regarded worthy of admiration only in proportion as they were artificial. He wondered, as he sat there, what would be the result of his sending to Mary Horneck one of those poems which his heart had sung to her. Would she be shocked at his presumption in venturing to love her? Would his delightful relations with her and her family be changed when it became known that he had not been satisfied with the friendship which he had enjoyed for some years, but had hoped for a response to his deeper feeling? His heart sank as he asked himself the question. “How is it that I seem ridiculous as a lover even to myself?” he muttered. “Why has God laid upon me the curse of being a poet? A poet is the chronicler of the loves of others, but it is thought madness should he himself look for the consolation of love. It is the irony of life that the man who is most capable of deep feeling should be forced to live in loneliness. How the world would pity a great painter who was struck blind--a great orator struck dumb! But the poet shut out from love receives no pity--no pity on earth--no pity in heaven.” He bowed his head down to his hands, and remained in that attitude for an hour. Then he suddenly sprang to his feet. He caught up the paper which he had just covered with verses, and was in the act of tearing it. He did not tear the sheet quite across, however; it fell from his hand to the desk and lay there, a slight current of air from a window making the torn edge rise and fall as though it lay upon the beating heart of a woman whose lover was beside her--that was what the quivering motion suggested to the poet who watched it. “And I would have torn it in pieces and made a ruin of it!” he said. “Alas! alas! for the poor torn, fluttering heart!” He dressed himself and went out, but to none of his accustomed haunts, where he would have been certain to meet with some of the distinguished men who were rejoiced to be regarded as his friends. In his mood he knew that friendship could afford him no solace. He knew that to offer a man friendship when love is in his heart is like giving a loaf of bread to one who is dying of thirst. CHAPTER X.