Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/199

Rh earnest aspirations, have been given those who know not what the gift has cost. Fame seems afar off, and cold sunshine; and that eager readiness of thought, which, found in the slightest thing matter for some graceful fancy, which at once sprang into music, seems cold and dead within us. There are times when the poet marvels how he ever wrote, and feels as if he never could write again. Alas! it is this world's worst curse, that the body predominates over the mind; and this was just now the case with Walter Maynard. He was roused from his meditation by a light touch on the shoulder: it was Lavinia Fenton, of whom he had lately seen but little. The fact was, he had carefully avoided her society; but to-night he felt glad of any one who broke in upon the gloomy shadow of his own thoughts. "My cold is so bad to-night," said she, "that I cannot venture out; and, not knowing what to do with myself, came to see if I could