Often Mrs. Aldwinkle would try to lead the conversation upwards on to those high spiritual planes from which the most satisfactory and romantic approach to love is to be made. Two souls that have acclimatised themselves to the thin air of religion, art, ethics or metaphysics have no difficulty in breathing the similar atmosphere of ideal love, whose territory lies contiguous to those of the other inhabitants of high mental altitudes. Mrs. Aldwinkle liked to approach love from the heights. One landed, so to speak, by aeroplane on the snowy summit of Popocatepetl, to descend by easy stages into the tropical _tierra caliente_ in the plains below. But with Chelifer it was impossible to gain a footing on any height at all. When, for example, Mrs. Aldwinkle started rapturously on art and the delights of being an artist, Chelifer would modestly admit to being a tolerable second-rate halma player. “But how can you speak like that?” cried Mrs. Aldwinkle. “How can you blaspheme so against art and your own talent? What’s your talent for?” “For editing the Rabbit Fancier’s Gazette, it appears,” Chelifer answered, courteously smiling. Sometimes she started on the theme of love itself; but with no greater success. Chelifer just politely agreed with everything she said, and when she pressed him for a definite opinion of his own replied, “I don’t know.” “But you must know,” Mrs. Aldwinkle insisted, “you must have some opinion. You have had experience.” Chelifer shook his head. “Alas,” he deplored, “never.” It was hopeless. “What am I to do?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle despairingly in the small hours. Wise in the experience of eighteen years, Irene suggested that the best thing to do would be to think no more about him—in that way. Mrs. Aldwinkle only sighed and shook her head. She had started loving because she believed in love, because she wanted to love and because a romantic opportunity had presented itself. She had rescued a Poet from death. How could she help loving him? The circumstances, the person were her invention; she had fallen in love, deliberately almost, with the figments of her own imagination. But there was no deliberately falling out again. The romantic yearnings had aroused those profounder instincts of which they were but the polite and literary emanation. The man was young, was beautiful—these were facts, not imaginings. These deep desires once started by the conscious mind from their sleep, once made aware of their quarry, how could they be held back? “He is a poet. For the love of poetry, for the love of passion and because I saved him from death, I love him.” If that had been all, it might have been possible for Mrs. Aldwinkle to take Irene’s advice. But from the obscure caves of her being another voice was speaking. “He is young, he is beautiful. The days are so few and short. I am growing old. My body is thirsty.” How could she cease to think of him?