She took it down from her shelf, a thin volume of Elizabeth Browning’s poems. On the flyleaf was an inscription and eight lines of writing in a neat hand. A stanza of free verse, and not especially good free verse. She read it for the fiftieth time: Do you recall One dusky night in June Over by Harrlow Copse, Heart of my heart? Ecstasy lay on your lips, Nectar of gods was your gift-- All in “the kiss of one girl” Joy and despair. The writer was no poet. Even as a writer of _vers libre_ his effort left something to be desired. She put away the book, returned to her desk, and sat for half an hour, her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed vacantly on the opposite wall. For the moment Peter Dawlish was off her hands, and though he came back again and again to her thoughts, it was not in the rôle of a responsibility. She took from a drawer the tin of cigarettes she had offered him on the previous night, and examined it absently. She had searched London for this brand of Egyptian cigarettes, and in the end had found them in the last place in the world she expected--Scotland Yard. The chief commissioner, an old Egyptian officer, imported them for his own use. She closed the lid, found an envelope, and addressing it to “Peter Dawlish, Esq., 104 Severall Street, London,” she inclosed the cigarettes. It was nearly dark when Lucretia brought in her tea. “You’re not going out again to-night, miss, are you?” When Leslie replied in the affirmative: “What about taking me with you, Miss Leslie?” Leslie did not laugh. “Somehow I can’t see you in the setting of a night club, Lucretia,” she said. “I could stay outside,” insisted Lucretia stoutly. “Anyway, I’d never dream of going into a night club after what the papers say about ’em. I saw a party getting out of a car the other night--ladies! Why, miss, I could have carried all their dresses in a little bag! Disgraceful, I call it!” Leslie laughed quietly. “You’ve got to understand, Lucretia,” she said, “that no woman is properly dressed for dinner unless she feels comfortably nude. Don’t faint!” “Women are not what they was,” said Lucretia severely. “That’s the devil of it, Lucretia. They are!” said Leslie.