The high lights flamed into Noreen's eyes. She braced herself into the corner of the carriage and fairly hurled her defiance at him. Indomitable purpose raged in her heart, unutterable pathos drooped around her lips. Every atom of blood in her body was working instantly in her brain. No single drop of it loafed in her cheeks under the flimsy guise of embarrassment. "I am not an 'Old Maid!' I am not! No one who creates anything is an 'Old Maid'!" The passion of her mood broke suddenly into wilful laughter. She shook her head at him threateningly. "Don't you ever dare to call me an 'Old Maid' again.--But I'll tell you just what you can call me--Women are supposed to be the Poetry of Life, aren't they--the Sonnet, the Lyric, the Limerick? Well--I am blank verse. _That_ is the trouble with me. I simply _do not rhyme_.--That is all!" "Will you marry me?" persisted the Political Economist. Noreen shook her head. "No!" she repeated. "You don't seem to understand. Marriage is not for me. I tell you that I am Blank Verse. I am _Talent_, and I do not _rhyme_ with Love. I am _Talent_ and I do not rhyme with _Man_. There is no place in my life for you. You can not come into my verse and rhyme with me!" "Aren't you a little bit exclusive?" goaded the Political Economist. Noreen nodded gravely. "Yes," she said, "I am brutally exclusive. But everybody isn't. Life is so easy for some women. Now, the Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Miss.' She rhymes inevitably with almost anybody's kiss.--_I_ am not just '_Miss_.' The Much-Loved Girl is nothing in the world except 'Girl.'--She rhymes inevitably with 'Curl.' _I_ am not just '_Girl_.' She is 'Coy' and rhymes with 'Boy.' She is 'Simple' and rhymes with 'Dimple.' _I am none of those things!_ I haven't the Lure of the Sonnet. I haven't the Charm of the Lyric. I haven't the Bait of the Limerick. At the very best I am 'Brain' and rhyme with 'Pain.' And I wish I was _dead_!" The Political Economist's heart was pounding like a gong smothered in velvet. But he stooped over very quietly and pushed the floor cushion under her feet and snuggled the mouse-gray sweater into a pillowed roll behind her aching neck. Then from his own remotest corner he reached out casually and rallied her limp, cold hand into the firm, warm clasp of his vibrant fingers. "Of course, you never have rhymed," he said. "How could you possibly have rhymed when--_I am the missing lines of your verse_?" His clasp tightened. "Never mind about Poetry to-night, Dear, but _to-morrow_ we'll take your little incomplete lonesome verse and quicken it into a Love-Song that will make the Oldest Angel in Heaven sit up and carol!" THE HAPPY-DAY IT was not you, yourself, who invented your Happy-day. It was your Father, long ago in little-lad time, when a Happy-Day or a Wooden Soldier or High Heaven itself lay equally tame and giftable in the cuddling, curving hollow of a Father's hand.