"Well, that's what I mean. I didn't care any more about him, then. I guess I sort of woke up," she laughed into his eyes. "He tires me to death with how he'll shoot himself," she added; "they always say that, you know, but they never do." Anne moved toward the door and Delafield followed her. "I must say that I appreciate your position, Miss--Miss--" he stopped, inquiringly. "Cooley--Miss Philippa Cooley," she supplied. "Of course you do. Ma said she hoped I'd have too much sense to stand up with a little radish of a man like that, even if he could support me!" "But I think it was rather hard on all of us that you should have engaged yourself to him at all. You must have known how it would end." He tried to speak reprovingly. She threw him a rich glance. "Oh, you can't help it sometimes," she murmured. "He teased so hard--you don't want to be disagreeable. As I was telling Miss Delafield----" "We must go," said Anne, briefly. As they drove home, an inexplicable desire to provoke her, to rouse some warm feeling in her, mastered him. "Your Aunt Ellen would enjoy this deep interest in the love affairs of an ex-druggist's clerk and a grocer's cashier," he said lightly. "Would she?" Anne returned quietly, and was ashamed of his freakish impulse. When they told him that evening that they had been able to accomplish nothing he only stared at them gloomily. "I knew it--I knew it," he muttered. "I did a poem last night--it's the last I shall ever do. You can put it in the book. It's the best I've done yet." Delafield hardly noticed his words as he seized the poem. What if from this sordid little tragedy had sprung the very flower of the poet's genius? He read eagerly. In a moment his face fell. He stared doubtfully at the boy. "Well," said West irritably, "can't you read it? Give it here--I'll read it to you." "You needn't, I can read it well enough." "What do you think of it?" "I think it's rot," Delafield returned curtly. He was bitterly disappointed. "Rot?" the boy's eyes narrowed. "What d'you mean?" "I mean that this doggerel is utterly unworthy of you, West, and that you certainly cannot include it in your book. It is the cheapest sentimentalism--good heavens, can't you see it? Have you no critical faculty whatever?" "Oh, Uncle Lester, _don't_!" Anne implored. "Let me see it," and she put out her hand. The young man struck it away and seized the paper. "I won't trouble you with my 'rot' any more, Mr. Delafield," he said, with a boyish grandiloquence, "we'll see what other people have to say about it." "Here, West, don't go away angry!" the older man urged, "I shouldn't have been so harsh. You've done such fine work that I couldn't bear----" "Oh, hush your noise!" West interrupted, brutally, "neither can I bear! You've driven me to death between you all--you'll never see me again!" and he flung out of the room.