“It makes me feel,” he said, “that nothing is impossible—­to have you here beside me.  I said, that day at Surbiton, ’There’s many good things in life, but there’s only one best, and that’s the wild-haired girl who’s pulling away at that oar.  I will make her my Grail, and some day, perhaps, if God wills, she shall become my wife!’”

He looked very hard before him as he said this, and his voice was full of deep feeling.

“Grail!” said Ann Veronica, and then:  “Oh, yes—­of course!  Anything but a holy one, I’m afraid.”

“Altogether holy, Ann Veronica.  Ah! but you can’t imagine what you are to me and what you mean to me!  I suppose there is something mystical and wonderful about all women.”

“There is something mystical and wonderful about all human beings.  I don’t see that men need bank it with the women.”

“A man does,” said Manning—­“a true man, anyhow.  And for me there is only one treasure-house.  By Jove!  When I think of it I want to leap and shout!”

“It would astonish that man with the barrow.”

“It astonishes me that I don’t,” said Manning, in a tone of intense self-enjoyment.

“I think,” began Ann Veronica, “that you don’t realize—­”

He disregarded her entirely.  He waved an arm and spoke with a peculiar resonance.  “I feel like a giant!  I believe now I shall do great things.  Gods! what it must be to pour out strong, splendid verse—­mighty lines! mighty lines!  If I do, Ann Veronica, it will be you.  It will be altogether you.  I will dedicate my books to you.  I will lay them all at your feet.”

He beamed upon her.

“I don’t think you realize,” Ann Veronica began again, “that I am rather a defective human being.”

“I don’t want to,” said Manning.  “They say there are spots on the sun.  Not for me.  It warms me, and lights me, and fills my world with flowers.  Why should I peep at it through smoked glass to see things that don’t affect me?” He smiled his delight at his companion.

“I’ve got bad faults.”

He shook his head slowly, smiling mysteriously.

“But perhaps I want to confess them.”

“I grant you absolution.”

“I don’t want absolution.  I want to make myself visible to you.”

“I wish I could make you visible to yourself.  I don’t believe in the faults.  They’re just a joyous softening of the outline—­more beautiful than perfection.  Like the flaws of an old marble.  If you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors.”

“I do want to tell you things, nevertheless.”

“We’ll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other things.  When I think of it—­”

“But these are things I want to tell you now!”

“I made a little song of it.  Let me say it to you.  I’ve no name for it yet.  Epithalamy might do.

     “Like him who stood on Darien
     I view uncharted sea
     Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights
     Before my Queen and me.