“To me,” said Elsley, “the fancy rises of some great Eastern monarch sitting in royal state; with ample shoulders sloping right and left, he lays his purple-mantled arms upon the heads of two of those Titan guards who stand on either side his footstool.”

“While from beneath his throne,” said Headley, “as Eastern poets would say, flow everlasting streams, life-giving, to fertilise broad lands below.”

“I did not know that you, too, were a poet,” said Valencia.  “Nor I, madam.  But if such scenes as these, and in such company, cannot inspire the fancy of even a poor country curate to something of exaltation, he must be dull indeed.”

“Why not put some of these thoughts into poetry?”

“What use?” answered he in so low, sad, and meaning a tone, meant only for her ear, that Valencia looked down at him:  but he was gazing intently upon the glorious scene.  Was he hinting at the vanity and vexation of poor Elsley’s versifying?  Or did he mean that he had now no purpose in life,—­no prize for which it was worth while to win honour?

She did not answer him:  but he answered himself,—­perhaps to explain away his own speech,—­

“No, madam!  God has written the poetry already; and there it is before me.  My business is not to re-write it clumsily but to read it humbly, and give Him thanks for it.”

More and more had Valencia been attracted by Headley, during the last few weeks.  Accustomed to men who tried to make the greatest possible show of what small wits they possessed, she was surprised to find one who seemed to think it a duty to keep his knowledge and taste in the background.  She gave him credit for more talent than appeared; for more, perhaps, than he really had.  She was piqued, too, at his very modesty and self-restraint.  Why did not he, like the rest who dangled about her, spread out his peacock’s train for her eyes; and try to show his worship of her, by setting himself off in his brightest colours?  And yet this modesty awed her into respect of him; for she could not forget that, whether he had sentiment much or little, sentiment was not the staple of his manhood:  she could not forget his cholera work; and she knew that, under that delicate and bashful outside, lay virtue and heroism, enough and to spare.

“But, if you put these thoughts into words, you would teach others to read that poetry.”

“My business is to teach people to do right; and if I cannot, to pray God to find some one who can.”

“Right, Headley!” said Major Campbell, laying his hand on the Curate’s shoulder.  “God dwells no more in books written with pens than in temples made with hands; and the sacrifice which pleases Him is not verse, but righteousness.  Do you recollect, Queen Whims, what I wrote once in your album?

  ’Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever
  Do noble things, not dream them, all day long,
  So making life, death, and that vast for ever,
  One grand, sweet song.’”