The Divine Fire

A free download from http://www.dertz.in


The Divine Fire

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Divine Fire, by May Sinclair
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: The Divine Fire
Author: May Sinclair
Release Date: November 9, 2004 [eBook #13996]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DIVINE
FIRE***
E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners
Projects, Karen Dalrymple, and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

THE DIVINE FIRE

by
MAY SINCLAIR
Author of _Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson_, Two Sides of a Question, etc.
etc.
1904

Mr. OWEN SEAMAN in Punch says:--
"Miss Sinclair is always quietly sure of herself. That is why she will not
be hurried, but moves through her gradual scheme with so leisured a
serenity; why her style, fluent and facile, never forces its natural
eloquence; why her humour plays with a diffused light over all her
work and seldom needs the advertisement of scintillating epigrams.
Judged by almost every standard to which a comedy like this should be
referred, I find her book, 'The Divine Fire' the most remarkable that I
have read for many years."
BY THE SAME AUTHOR TWO SIDES OF A QUESTION

CONTENTS
BOOK I DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE
BOOK II LUCIA'S WAY
BOOK III THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
BOOK IV THE MAN HIMSELF

BOOK I
DISJECTA MEMBRA POETAE

CHAPTER I
Horace Jewdwine had made the most remarkable of his many
remarkable discoveries. At least he thought he had. He could not be
quite sure, which was his excuse for referring it to his cousin Lucia,
whose instinct (he would not call it judgement) in these matters was
infallible--strangely infallible for so young a girl. What, he wondered,
would she say to Savage Keith Rickman?
On Saturday, when he first came down into Devonshire, he would have
been glad to know. But to-day, which was a Tuesday, he was not
interested in Rickman. To eat strawberries all morning; to lie out in the
hammock all afternoon, under the beach-tree on the lawn of Court
House; to let the peace of the old green garden sink into him; to look at
Lucia and forget, utterly forget, about his work (the making of
discoveries), that was what he wanted. But Lucia wanted to talk, and to
talk about Rickman earnestly as if he were a burning question, when
even lying in the hammock Jewdwine was so hot that it bothered him to
talk at all.
He was beginning to be sorry that he had introduced him--the exciting
topic, that is to say, not the man; for Rickman you could scarcely
introduce, not at any rate to Lucia Harden.
"Well, Lucia?" He pronounced her name in the Italian manner,
"Loo-chee-a," with a languid stress on the vowels, and his tone
conveyed a certain weary but polite forbearance.
Lucia herself, he noticed, had an ardent look, as if a particularly
interesting idea had just occurred to her. He wished it hadn't. An idea of
Lucia's would commit him to an opinion of his own; and at the moment
Jewdwine was not prepared to abandon himself to anything so definite
and irretrievable. He had not yet made up his mind about Rickman, and
did not want to make it up now. Certainty was impossible owing to his
somewhat embarrassing acquaintance with the man. That, again, was
where Lucia had come in. Her vision of him would be free and
undisturbed by any suggestion of his bodily presence.

Meanwhile, Rickman's poem, or rather the first two Acts of his
neo-classic drama, Helen in Leuce, lay on Lucia's lap. Jewdwine had
obtained it under protest and with much secrecy. He had promised
Rickman, solemnly, not to show it to a soul; but he had shown it to
Lucia. It was all right, he said, so long as he refrained from disclosing
the name of the person who had written it. Not that she would have
been any the wiser if he had.
"And it was you who discovered him?" Her voice lingered with a
peculiarly tender and agreeable vibration on the "you." He closed his
eyes and let that, too, sink into him.
"Yes," he murmured, "nobody else has had a hand in it--as yet."
"And what are you going to do with him now you have discovered
him?"
He opened his eyes, startled by the uncomfortable suggestion. It had
not yet occurred to him that the discovery of Rickman could entail any
responsibility whatever.
"I don't know that I'm going to do anything