But it had never entered the doctor's head that poetry could have anything to do with life--even in the case of the poet himself--how much less in that of his admirer! Never once had it occurred to him to ask how he could be such a fool as enjoy anything false--beingless save in the brain of the poet--a mere lie! For that which has nothing to do with life, what can it be but a lie?
Not the less Jermyn got down book after book, for many a day undusted on his shelves, and read and re-read many a passage which had once borne him into the seventh heaven of feeling, suggesting somewhere a better world, in which lovely things might be had WITHOUT TOO MUCH TROUBLE: now as he read, he was struck with a mild surprise at finding how much had lost even the appearance of the admirable; how much of what had seemed bitter, he could thoroughly accept.

He did not ask whether the change came of a truer vision or a sourer judgment, put all down to the experience that makes a man wise, none to a loss within.

He was not able to imagine himself in anything less than he had been, in anything less than he would be.

Yet poetry was to him now the mere munition of war! mere feathers for the darts of Cupid! -- that was how the once poetic man to himself expressed himself! He was laying in store of weapons, he said! For when a man will use things in which he does not believe, he cannot fail to be vulgar.
But Lady Joan saw no vulgarity in the result--it was hid in the man himself.

To her he seemed a profound lover of poetry, who knew much of which she had never even heard.