To the downpour of the night had succeeded a sullen morning. The lowering sky promised more misery to follow. The air was wet with mists; the trees dripped incessantly; every blade of grass shone with the dankness that clung to it, and the state of the deep-rutted, rude, uneven roads was terrible. But even all these things together, and the fact that we had to plough our way, step by step, slowly through seas of mud could not entirely depress our spirits. We felt ourselves in the society of one another, to be in spite of everything, invincible in our common courage, unconquerable in our common resolution. The one sustained the other in these adventures. "My prettiness," says I, "it is under embarrassing conditions such as these that we should endeavour to sustain ourselves with a few tender, amorous passages of love. I think I will pay you a compliment or two upon your beauty, if you will give me but a minute's time in which to rack my mind to find them." "For your pretty speeches to be sincere, sir," says Cynthia, "they should be quite spontaneous." "Here is one," says I. "The sunshine of your countenance lights up the morning's gloom." "A common enough figure, I confess," says she, "which a hundred poets have better exprest." "Here is another, then," says I, undaunted. "The solace of your companionship sweetens the bitter miles." "Nay," says she, "I think no better of that trope than the first. It wants a poet to give an originality, a point and grace, to things of this sort." "But every lover is a poet," says I triumphantly. "I am deluded then," says Cynthia, "for if your love is measured by your poetry I am like to die of a broken heart. But after all, that last glib phrase of yours is but a poor sort of speech for a man to make to his mistress. A poet, as all the world knows, is but an embellisher of common things." "A poet is more than that," says I. "A thousand times more. A poet is---- A poet is----" "A poet is?" says Cynthia archly. "The human mind cannot express what a poet is," says I. "He is all, and he is nothing. He weaves a sovereign spell about material things. He can put a new glamour in the stars, although he cannot hold a candle to the sun. He is the airy nothing that can reveal the face of God to simple men." "But what hath all this to do with Love?" says Cynthia. "And I confess I never suspected this phase to your character. I always held you for a common four-square kind of a fellow enough, by no means given to these sudden heats and violences, these sudden whimsies and nonsensicals." "No more did I," says I ruefully. "But it is so like this wretched passion to take us in our weakest part, which in me, as you are ever the first to remind me, is the head."