"This is not one of your teasing jokes?" she said appealingly, her piteous eyes looking up into his. "No, my Ellaline. Do you think I would hoax you thus--to dash you to earth again?" "Then," she said slowly and painfully, "then I can never marry you. We must say 'good-bye.'" Her lover gazed at her in dazed silence. The butterflies floated in the summer air, a bee buzzed about a wayside flower, from afar came the tinkle of a brook. A deep peace was on all things--only in the hearts of the two littérateurs was pain and consternation. [Illustration: _The Confession of Ellaline._] "You can never marry me!" repeated John Beveridge at last. "And why not?" "I have told you. Because you are Addiper." "But that is no reason." "Is it not?" she said. "I thought Addiper would have a subtler apprehension." "But what is it you object to in me?" "To your genius, of course." "To my genius!" "Yes, no mock modesty. Between augurs it won't do. Every author must know very well he stands apart from the world, or he would not set himself to paint it. I know quite well I am not as other women. What is the use of paltering with one's consciousness!" Still the same delicious candor shone in the gray eyes. John Beveridge, not at all grasping his dismissal, felt an unreasoning impulse to kiss them. "Well, supposing I am a genius," he said instead. "Where's the harm?" "No harm till you propose to yoke me with it! I never will marry a genius." "Oh, don't be so absurd, Ellaline!" he said. "You've been reading the foolish nonsense about the geniuses necessarily making bad husbands. No doubt in some prominent instances geniuses have not been working models of the domestic virtues, but on the other hand there are scores of instances to the contrary. And blockheads make quite as bad husbands as your Shelleys and your Byrons. Besides it was only in the past that geniuses were blackguards; to-day it is the correct thing to be correct. Respectability nowadays adds chastity to the studies from the nude; marital fidelity enhances the force of poems of passion: and philanthropy adds the last touch to tragic acting. So why should I suffer for the sins of my predecessors? If I may judge myself by my present sensations, what I am gifted with is a genius for domesticity. Do not sacrifice me, dearest, to an unproved and unscientific generalization." "It is not of that I am thinking," Ellaline replied, shaking her head sadly. "In my opinion the woman who refused Shakespeare merely on the ground that he wrote Shakespeare's works, should be sent to Coventry as a coward. No, do not fancy I am that. I may not be strong, but I have courage enough to marry you if that were all. It is not because I am afraid you would make me unhappy." "Ah, there is something you are hiding from me," he said anxiously, impressed by the gravity and sincerity of her tones. "No, there is nothing. I cannot marry you, because you are a genius."