Soames shook his head. 🔊

"It's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. 🔊 "It's more a matter of trusting and encouraging." 🔊

"I see, yes. 🔊 I had rather gathered from the preface to 'Negations' that you were a—a Catholic." 🔊

"Je l'étais à cette époque. 🔊 In fact, I still am. 🔊 I am a Catholic diabolist." 🔊

But this profession he made in an almost cursory tone. 🔊 I could see that what was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read Negations. 🔊 His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. 🔊 I felt as one who is about to be examined viva voce on the very subject in which he is shakiest. 🔊 I hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be published. 🔊

"Next week," he told me. 🔊

"And are they to be published without a title?" 🔊

"No. I found a title at last. But I sha'n't tell you what it is," as though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. 🔊 "I am not sure that it wholly satisfies me. 🔊 But it is the best I can find. 🔊 It suggests something of the quality of the poems—strange growths, natural and wild, yet exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons." 🔊