For two weeks after that night he did not come. Anne never mentioned his name, and Delafield, doubtful of what that might portend, tried to believe that she had forgotten him. Toward the end of the second week she spoke of the completion of his book, and suggested that her uncle should invite Mr. D----: "Urge Henry to consent to it," she added, "he will do anything for you, Uncle Les." "More than for you?" he asked. "For me?" She flushed a little. "I doubt if he distinguishes me from my portrait over the mantel!" "And you wish that he would," Delafield wanted to reply, trying to remember if she had ever called him "Henry" before. On a warm April evening, when the windows were open to catch the setting sun and the odour of the blossoming window-boxes, he came at last. As he stepped into the room, head erect, eyes wide and bright, they became aware immediately of a change in him. His glance was more conscious, more alert, his hand-grasp more assured. "You are in time to dine with us," Anne said, with her grave smile, "we are all alone. Will you stay?" "Thanks, I can't stay, I'm going somewhere else," he answered quickly. "And the new poem?" Delafield inquired, "did you get it done? That was to be the last, wasn't it?" "Oh! I haven't been writing lately," he explained, blushing a little. "I've been too busy--that is, I've been too--I've been thinking of something else." He stood before them in the full light of the late day; every expression in his sensitive, mobile face showed clear. "A perfectly wonderful thing has happened," he burst out, "you couldn't understand. Nobody can understand but me, and--and----" "Who is she?" said Delafield bluntly. "How did you know?" cried the boy, "have you seen--did she tell----" "Of course not. When did it happen?" Delafield kept his face persistently from Anne's. For the world he could not have looked at her. "It was last week." West was smiling eagerly at him, ignoring the woman's presence. "I went into the grocer's to do an errand for Mr. Swazey, and she was behind the little grating--you pay her. She is the cashier. I didn't take my change, and she had to call me back, and we dropped it all over the floor. She helped me pick it up. Oh, if you could see her, Mr. Delafield!" "Is she handsome?" "She is a perfectly beautiful woman," said the boy. "Dear, dear!" murmured the older man. "We are engaged, but her mother objects to me. In fact--in fact, her mother doesn't know that she is engaged. She has been engaged before. But she never really loved the man. Her mother doesn't care for poetry----" At that word, Delafield, with a distinct effort, connected this babbling druggist's clerk with his poet of "The Clearing Shower." There could be no doubt that they were the same person. As in a dream he listened to the boy.