Hester, however, would not yield the paper, but began again to read it: Vavasor's writing, out of the bank, was one of those irritating hands that wrong not only with the absence of legibility but with the show of its presence, and she had not yet got so clear a notion of his verses as a mere glance of them in print would have given her. Why she did not quite like them she did not yet know, and was anxious not to be unfair. That they were clever she did not doubt; they had for one thing his own air of unassumed ease, and she could not but feel they had some claim to literary art. This added a little to her hesitation, not in pronouncing on them--she was far from that yet--but in recognizing what she felt about them. Had she had a suspicion of the lie he had told her, and that they were the work of yesterday, it would at once have put leagues between them, and made the verses hateful to her. As it was, the more she read and thought, the farther she seemed from a conclusion, and the time Vavasor stood there waiting, appeared to both of them three times as long as it really was. At last he felt he was pounded and must try back. "You have discovered," he said, "that the song is an imitation of Sir John Suckling!" He had never thought of the man while writing it. "I don't know anything of him," answered Hester, looking up. Vavasor knew nothing was more unlikely than that she should know anything of him. "When did he write?" she asked. "In the reign of Charles I., I believe," he answered. "But tell me," said Hester, "where is the good of imitating anyone--even the best of writers. Our own original, however poor, must be the thing for us! To imitate is to repudiate our own being." "That I admit," answered Vavasor, who never did anything original except when he followed his instincts; "but for a mere trial of skill an imitation is admissible--don't you think?" "Oh, surely," replied Hester; "only it seems to me a waste of time--especially with such a gift as you have of your own!" "At all events," said Vavasor, hiding his gratification with false humility, "there was no great presumption in a shy at Suckling!" "There may have been the more waste," returned Hester. "I would sooner imitate Bach or even Handel than Verdi." Vavasor could stand a good deal of censure if mingled with some praise--which he called appreciation. Of this Hester had given him enough to restore his spirits, and had also suggested a subject on which he found he could talk. "But," he said, "how can it be worse for me to imitate this or that writer, than for you to play over and over music you could easily excel."