"In one way it is, perhaps, and in another way it isn't." But was this ethical Cæsarean section, he wondered, the only means of bringing his belated offspring to light? "I can understand that; it's a beautiful thing." "But if I have written one I still have the power to write another." It was the master losing himself in the message, the parent dying for the child. "Of course, but you mustn't--_please_ don't think for one moment that I want to lay claim to it, now or at any time. I'm not a poetess, as you know, and never could be one." He fell to pacing the room once more. "I was only thinking," she went on with slightly compressed lips, "of you when I came to suggest the thing." "I know, and it was very generous of you," he answered, as he began rummaging through his manuscripts for the lines. "You've written this thing, and, as you say, it lies in your power to write something as good, or better. You've confessed you see no way of getting rid of it, so, after all," she said wearily, "it's only a matter of two hundred and fifty dollars." Hartley looked up at her coldly. "No, it's a great deal more than that," he said gravely, turning away from her again. "Much more. But to be candid, just at the present moment I am painfully in need of--of money. And I don't feel like arguing the ethics of it all out to-day as I ought to do." Then he sighed heavily, and added, "But I wish I were free." So the offer was accepted and Cordelia carried away with her the manuscript of The Need of War, troubled and weighed down with an indeterminate sense of humiliation, yet feeling that out of the ashes of that humiliation might ultimately rise the towers of a new strength. As for the poem itself, she thought little about it; she was no lover of blank verse. Her one consolation seemed to be a feelings--tragically feminine--that she had drawn down to her a figure that before had always seemed to shadow and chill her with its shadowy immaculacy. CHAPTER XX A POWER NOT HERSELF Yet life's long silence, after song, Can do thy lyric heart no wrong. Once broken music fell from thee, While now--now thou art harmony. Those notes that soared from thee of old, Wrapt in dusk wings they ne'er unfold, Brood vocal in thy clouded eyes; And in thy bosom's fall and rise-- O poor, sad, sea-like surging breast-- Is song itself made manifest! JOHN HARTLEY, "The Lost Voice." A song in the heart is worth two in the book.--"The Silver Poppy."