Wearily, but with patience, Chelifer listened. Mrs. Aldwinkle’s hesitating voice, moving up and down from note to unrelated note, sounded in his ears. The words became blurred and vague. They lost their articulateness and sense. They were no more than the noise of the wind, a sound that accompanied, but did not interrupt his thoughts. Chelifer’s thoughts, at the moment, were poetical. He was engaged in putting the finishing touches to a little “Mythological Incident,” the idea of which had recently occurred to him and to which, during the last two days, he had been giving its definite form. Now it was finished; a little polishing, that was all it needed now. Through the pale skeleton of woods Orion walks. The north wind lays Its cold lips to the twin steel flutes That are his gun and plays. Knee-deep he goes where, penny-wiser Than all his kind who steal and hoard, Year after year, some sylvan miser His copper wealth has stored. The Queen of Love and Beauty lays In neighbouring beechen aisles her baits— Bread-crumbs and the golden maize. Patiently she waits. And when the unwary pheasant comes To fill his painted maw with crumbs, Accurately the sporting Queen Takes aim. The bird has been. Secure, Orion walks her way. The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire. He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire Attached to her recumbent prey. Chelifer repeated the verses to himself and was not displeased. The second stanza was a little too “quaint,” perhaps; a little too—how should he put it?—too Walter-Crane’s-picture-book. One might omit it altogether, perhaps; or substitute, if one could think of it, something more perfectly in harmony with the silver-age, allusive elegance of the rest. As for the last verse, that was really masterly. It gave Racine his _raison d’être_; if Racine had never existed, it would have been necessary to invent him, merely for the sake of those last lines. He falls. ’Tis Venus all entire Attached to her recumbent prey. Chelifer lingered over them in ecstasy. He became aware, all at once, that Mrs. Aldwinkle was addressing herself to him more directly. From inharmoniously Aeolian, her voice became once more articulate. “That’s what you’re like,” she was saying. “Tell me I’m right. Say I understand you.” “Perhaps,” said Chelifer, smiling.