Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/243

 But towards the end her pleasure was diminished by the thought that soon he would stop reading and an abyss of silence would open up into which she must throw some appropriate remark. It was well enough to say to other poets 'How tender!' but what can you say to a Tennyson?

The great voice dropped, and Beauty, which had beat her wings like a bird through the spaces of the red drawing-room, sank into silence. Tears gathered on her lashes. She was speechless. Under the excitement of the moment she had done the only right and appropriate thing—made the only comment that could have pleased the Poet. She had 'broken down.'

They gave her a big Gothic bed to sleep in. In the morning there was early tea and thin bread-and-butter. It was arranged that she should leave the house in a hired conveyance and catch her boat back before the Tennysons should awake. In the dull early morning she was glad there was no one to whom she must make a courteous and appropriate farewell—only the servants and the gardener's boy who stood by the phaeton and politely offered her a nosegay of purple verbenas and pink sweet peas. 'And a letter, miss.'

'Not for me!' But she looked and saw her name