"More than anything. But by poetry I don't mean merely beautiful verses. I include all grand and noble thoughts that imagination has coloured, and that are read as prose. A really poetic nature is one that sees beauty in the simplest of created things as well as in the grandest; that is humble and yet great; that drinks at every fountain of nature; that steeps itself in the enchantment of a scene, not measuring merely the height of a mountain from the sea level, or dwelling on the possible discomfort of a storm at a particular altitude; that knows its mind to be full of longings and yet can only partially satisfy them; that would fain be glorified, filled, enriched; and, alas! knows only too well that the wings of the mind are beating against the prison-bars of a stern and hard existence, from which escape is only possible in dreams, or--death!" "Do you not think that such a nature must be intensely unhappy?" "I said so at the beginning of our conversation. But still it holds the two extremes that make up life--happiness and misery; it gets more out of each than natures more placid and commonplace and content. It really lives, and the others--stagnate." "You must have read a great deal, and thought a great deal," says Lauraine, looking admiringly up at her friend's thoughtful face. "Do you know I think you are the only woman I have ever met who talks about other things besides dress and fashion? I don't think I ever heard you say a scandalous word of anybody. You put me in mind of something a friend of mine once said, 'Women who are intellectual always talk of _things_; women who are shallow, of _persons_.' There is a great deal in that if you come to think of it. How wearisome it is to hear of nothing but 'names' in a conversation; and yet I know heaps of men and women who are considered brilliant and witty and amusing, and whose whole conversation turns upon nothing else but gossip respecting other men, or women." "I quite understand you. Society is eminently artificial, and objects to strong emotions, and would rather not be called upon to feel anything. 'Why _will_ people go on writing?' said a lady to me one day. 'Everything has been said that can be said. Literature is only repetition.'"