But Lucia’s equanimity survived.  “Am I to read it now?”

“As you like.”

She carried the book up to her own room and did not appear till lunch-time.  In her absence Horace seemed a little uneasy; but he went on making himself agreeable to Kitty.  “He must be pretty desperate,” thought she, “if he thinks it worth while.”  Apparently he did think it worth while, though he allowed no sign of desperation to appear.  Lucia, equally discreet, avoided ostentatious privacy.  They sat out all afternoon under the beechtrees while she read, flaunting The Triumph of Life in his very eyes.  He watched every movement of her face that changed as it were to the cadence of the verse.  It was always so, he remembered, when she was strongly moved.  At last she finished and he smiled.

“You like your birthday present?”

“Very much.  But Horace, he has done what you said was impossible.”

“Anybody would have said it was impossible.  Modern drama in blank verse, you know—­”

“Yes.  It ought to have been all wrong.  But because he’s both a great poet and a great dramatist, it’s all right, you see.  Look,” she said, pointing to a passage that she dared not read.  “Those are human voices.  Could anything be simpler and more natural?  But it’s blank verse because it couldn’t be more perfectly expressed in prose.”

“Yes, yes.  I wonder how he does it.”

“It would have been impossible to anybody else.”

“It remains impossible.  If it’s ever played, it will be played because of Rickman’s stage-craft and inimitable technique, not because of his blank verse.”

She put the book down; took up her work, and said no more.  Horace seemed to have found his answer and to be satisfied.  “A fool,” thought Kitty; “but he shall have his chance.”  So she left them alone together that evening.

But Jewdwine was very far from being satisfied, either with Lucia or himself.  Lucia had refused to play to him yesterday because she had a headache; she had refused to walk with him to-day because she was tired; and to-night she would not sit up to talk to him because she had another headache.  That evening he had all but succumbed to a terrible temptation.  It was so long since he had been alone with Lucia, and there was something in her face, her dress, her attitude, that appealed to the authority on AEsthetics.  He found himself wondering how it would be if he got up and kissed her.  But just then Lucia leaned back in her chair, and there was that tired look in her face which he had come to dread.  He thought better of it.  If he had kissed her his sense of propriety would have obliged him to propose to her and marry her.

He almost wished he had yielded to that temptation, done that desperate deed.  It would have at least settled the question once for all.