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“And I wonder how much of these ardours,” she thought, “is kindled by my praise of his verses?” She bit her lip, and she regarded him with a hint of sadness. She said, aloud: “But I did not, after all, speak to Lord Pevensey concerning the printing of your poem. Instead, I burned your ‘Hero and Leander’. ”

She saw him jump, as under a whip-lash. Then he smiled again, in that wry fashion of his. “I lament the loss to letters, for it was my only copy. But you knew that. ”

“Yes, Kit, I knew it was your only copy. ”

“Oho! and for what reason did you burn it, may one ask?”

“I thought you loved it more than you loved me. It was my rival, I thought—” The girl was conscious of remorse, and yet it was remorse commingled with a mounting joy.

“And so you thought a jingle scribbled upon a bit of paper could be your rival with me!”

Then Cynthia no longer doubted, but gave a joyous little sobbing laugh, for the love of her disreputable dear poet was sustaining the stringent testing she had devised. She touched his freckled hand caressingly, and her face was as no man had ever seen it, and her voice, too, caressed him.

“Ah, you have made me the happiest of women, Kit! Kit, I am almost disappointed in you, though, that you do not grieve more for the loss of that beautiful poem. ”

His smiling did not waver; yet the lean, red-haired man stayed motionless. “Do I appear perturbed?” he said. “Why, but see how lightly I take the destruction of my life-work in this, my masterpiece! For I can assure you it was a masterpiece, the fruit of two years’ toil and of much loving repolishment—”

“Ah, but you love me better than such matters, do you not?” she asked him, tenderly. “Kit Marlowe, I adore you! Sweetheart, do you not understand that a woman wants to be loved utterly and entirely? She wants no rivals, not even paper rivals. And so often when you talked of poetry I have felt lonely and chilled and far away from you, and I have been half envious, dear, of your Heros and your Helens, and your other good-for-nothing Greek minxes. But now I do not mind them at all. And I will make amends, quite prodigal amends, for my naughty jealousy; and my poet shall write me some more lovely poems, so he shall—”

He said “You fool!”

And she drew away from him, for this man was no longer smiling.

“You burned my ‘Hero and Leander’! You! you big-eyed fool! You lisping idiot! you wriggling, cuddling worm! you silken bag of guts! had not even you the wit to perceive it was immortal beauty which would have lived long after you and I were stinking dirt? And you, a half-witted animal, a shining, chattering parrot, lay claws to it!” Marlowe had risen in a sort of seizure, in a condition which was really quite unreasonable when you considered that only a poem was at stake, even a rather long poem.

And Cynthia began to smile, with tremulous hurt-looking young lips. “So my poet’s love is very much the same as Pevensey’s love! And I was right, after all. ”

“Oh, oh!” said Marlowe, “that ever a poet should love a woman! What jokes does the lewd flesh contrive!” Of a sudden he was calmer: and then rage fell from him like a dropped cloak and he viewed her as with respectful wonder. “Why, but you sitting there, with goggling innocent bright eyes, are an allegory of all that is most droll and tragic. Yes, and indeed there is no reason to blame you. It is not your fault that every now and then is born a man who serves an idea which is to him the most important thing in the world. It is not your fault that this man perforce inhabits a body to which the most important thing in the world is a woman. Certainly it is not your fault that this compost makes yet another jumble of his two desires, and persuades himself that the two are somehow allied. The woman inspires, the woman uplifts, the woman strengthens him for his high work, saith he! Well, well, perhaps there are such women, but by land and sea I have encountered none of them. ”