VI

was it marriage? And finally, if one still wished, more than anything in the whole world, to write poetry, was it marriage? She had her doubts.

But she would put it to the test. She looked at the ring. She looked at the ink pot. Did she dare? No, she did not. But she must. No, she could not. What should she do then? Faint, if possible. But she had never felt better in her life.

“Hang it all!” she cried, with a touch of her old spirit, “Here goes!”

And she plunged her pen neck deep in the ink. To her enormous surprise, there was no explosion. She drew the nib out. It was wet, but not dripping. She wrote. The words were a little long in coming, but come they did. Ah! but did they make sense? she wondered, a panic coming over her lest the pen might have been at some of its involuntary pranks again. She read,

And then I came to a field where the springing grass Was dulled by the hanging cups of fritillaries, Sullen and foreign-looking, the snaky flower, Scarfed in dull purple, like Egyptian girls⁠—

As she wrote she felt some power (remember we are dealing with the most obscure manifestations of the human spirit) reading over her shoulder, and when she had written “Egyptian girls,” the power told her to stop. Grass, the power seemed to say, going back with a ruler such as governesses use to the beginning, is all right; the hanging cups of fritillaries⁠—admirable; the snaky flower⁠—a thought, strong from a lady’s pen, perhaps, but Wordsworth, no doubt, sanctions it; but⁠—girls? Are girls necessary? You have a husband at the Cape, you say? Ah, well, that’ll do.

And so the spirit passed on.