“Damn it Jarge You surely do get my billy I asked for three silk ones And all I can find in the package is some flannel pajamas and one of your loveletters By the way Harass Has only one R. Well the Lord goes on loving Barkeley At least we suppose he does We have no evidence to the contrary. I have——” Edward saw a young woman undergraduate’s pink face shining towards him like a sun. Her eyes looked as though they were going to fall out. She was waving to Edward. Edward reflected that there were many things in the world that he did not understand. Why should a female undergraduate with whom he was only very slightly acquainted wave and wink so earnestly at him across a room? Was she feeling ill? Edward blamed himself for not understanding. “Our hero lives as if in a dream,” he thought. “Probably other men are quite used to this sort of thing. Perhaps she is making advances to me in a way entirely recognized in certain circles.” With his brooding eyes fixed upon the young woman, who was now pencilling a note, Edward listened to the poem. “I have had five proposals this semester One from an assistant instructor. Have you read Millie’s scream In the Liberator for March? Yours body and soul You’d prefer body to soul I guess Janks.” The young woman, Edward noticed, was, by means of signs, causing her note to be passed to Rhoda. “Notes for Rhoda but winks for me,” thought Edward, wrestling mildly with the problem. “That poet has courage,” said the high-collared student. “To dispense wholly with form....” “Yes, it needs courage to write that,” said Avery Bird, who was narrowing his eyes and nodding his head slowly. “It is of course callow, but then so are the chickens of ostriches. Query, does it dispense with form? There is a sort of antiphony—pajamas and the Lord—the lovesick instructor and the scream—like the leeward and windward sides of a wall....” Rhoda announced, “Some nameless person has just passed me a note apologising for the last poem. It was a letter really, which he or she passed me by mistake in place of a poem.” Rhoda’s voice brushed the incident aside and everyone tried to look as wise as though nothing had happened. Mr. Bird, only slightly disconcerted, began to point out to his neighbor how bright was the promise of poetry in a land where even common correspondence had a rhythm of its own. Rhoda read, Answer to a Friend’s Letter “For me is such a table set? Shall such a gate receive me? For I am scarred and shamed, and yet Nor scars nor shame can grieve me. I come from a dear and desert shore With dancing stars my feet before; Shall these my friends forget me, or Shall yours—believe me? Yet I confess that, at your door, My stars—did leave me.