"Gracious!" said Marjon, under her breath. "The deuce is to pay again." * * * * * In the park Johannes met Mijnheer van Lieverlee. He stood on the grass in front of a thicket of withered shrubs, gazing at the mountains; and was clad in cream-white flannel, with a bright-purple silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. One hand rested upon his ebony walking-stick; with the other--thumb and forefinger pressed together, and little finger extended--he was making rhythmical movements in the air. When he saw Johannes, he greeted him with a nod and a wink, as if there were a secret understanding between them. "Superb! Is it not? Superb!" Johannes did not exactly know what he meant--the verses he had received, the mountains opposite, or the fine, September morning. He selected the most obvious, and said: "Yes, sir! Glorious weather!" Van Lieverlee gave him a keen look, as if uncertain whether or not he was being made sport of, and then leisurely remarked: "You do not appear to be impressed by the combination of white, mauve, and golden brown." Johannes thought himself very sensitive to the effect of color; so he felt ashamed of not having noticed the color-composition. He saw it now, fully--the white flannel, the purple pocket-handkerchief, and the faded, yellow-brown shrub. That Van Lieverlee should thus include himself in this symphony of color seemed to him in the highest degree pertinent. "I was engaged in making a 'pantoem' in harmony with that color-scheme," said Van Lieverlee; and then, seeing the blank look on Johannes' face, he added, "Do you know what a 'pantoem' is?" "I do not, sir." "Oh, boy! boy! and you call yourself a poet! What did you receive this morning? Do you know what _that_ is?" "A sonnet," said Johannes, eagerly. "Is that so? Did you think it a fine one?" That was a disquieting question. Johannes was quite at a loss about it; but it seemed that poets were wont to ask such questions, so he overcame what he considered his childishness, and said: "I think it is splendid!" "You think so! Well, I _know_ it. There is no need to make a secret of it. I call what is good, _good_, whether it was I who made it, or somebody else." That seemed both just and true to Johannes. Now that he was again with Van Lieverlee, and heard him talk in such a grand style, with that easy, fluent enunciation, and those elegant gestures, he found him, on the whole, not bad, but, on the contrary, attractive and admirable. He knew that Marjon would think otherwise; but his confidence in her judgment declined as his confidence in Van Lieverlee augmented.