'Now look here, Mr Osborne, take this London Sunday and this very day as a specimen of dulness. What could be more satisfactory? I don't know what you did before dinner. I go in to dinner, I sit down. A man opposite me makes a remark; everyone stares. I say something, another man says something, Mr Nevill says something more. You try to say something, and choke and say nothing. Then four ladies give us scraps of sermons we had grown tired of as children. We come into the drawing-room, we go to sleep, and are waked up by you and Mr Nevill coming back. You walk over, stare at me in a most frightful manner, and rush away. Mr Nevill tries to make love to me, and fails. The other ladies go away to lie down or get ready for church, and I am left here alone until you turn up. When you do look in, you are as cheerful as a mute at a funeral. Now, tell me, Mr Osborne, is not that stupid?' Osborne felt rather disappointed she did not wind up with 'Damn it all, Georgie, old man, but this is infernally slow; let's go liquor-up and have a weed.' Nothing she could say or do now would surprise him. She was no longer an enigma or a mystery, but an ascertained certainty, a denounced deception. He said, simply and sadly,-- 'You know, Miss Gordon, we Anglo-Saxons are a stupid race.' 'But there are exceptions.' 'You will not find many in the _pure_ Anglo-Saxon blood.' Bowing slightly. 'Things are much altered when, through the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon veins, flows brighter and livelier blood.' 'You are not stupid,' she said. 'I approve of the dull ways you have been finding fault with.' 'Ah, that is acquired stupidity, not natural. I did not say you are intelligent, but you are intellectual, intensely intellectual, and poetic. You always look at the glorified side of things. You are a poet.' He stared at her. He forgot everything, and stared at her. When he recovered himself he replied nervously, hesitatingly, diffidently,-- 'I-I assure you, Miss Gordon, I never wrote a line of poetry in my life--never even thought of such a thing.' 'It isn't necessary a poet should write poetry. He may think it.' 'But I assure you I have never even thought a line of poetry in my life.' 'Yes, you have. You thought poetry to-day at dinner, and were too shy to speak it.' Again he forgot everything, and stared. A criminal caught red-handed could not have been more amazed with fear. He had never been accused of poetry before, and her words were like heartless revellers who broke into the sanctuary of his soul, tore from it his most sacred secret, and set it up in the marketplace to be jeered at by all the town. She laughed softly. 'There is no witchery in it. I told you you were not intelligent, but you were intellectual. I am not intellectual, but I am intelligent. You are intellectual and a poet. I am intelligent, and I found you out.' CHAPTER III. IN THE CHURCHYARD.