Night And Day

door at this moment he would think that they

she shook hands with him,

"Are you a poet?" she demanded. He felt that her question had an unexplained weight of meaning behind it, as if she sought an answer to a question that she did not ask.

"No. I haven't written any poetry for years," he replied. "But all the same, I don't agree with you. I think it's the only thing worth doing."

"Why do you say that?" she asked, almost with impatience, tapping her spoon two or three times against the side of her cup.

"Why?" Ralph laid hands on the first words that came to mind. "Because, I suppose, it keeps an ideal alive which might die otherwise."

When you're gone I shall look out of that window and think of you. I shall waste the whole evening thinking of you. I shall waste my whole life, I believe.

in extreme youth one has an ignorant hope. He was no longer certain that he would triumph.

Strange thoughts are bred in passing through crowded streets should the passenger, by chance, have no exact destination in front of him,

it keeps an ideal alive which might die otherwise

It would be easy, Ralph thought, to worship one so far removed, and yet of so straight a nature; easy to submit recklessly to her, without thought of future pain

And she overflowed the edges of the dream;

vanity unrequited and urgent.