Now while Esther was busily weaving this laurel into a wreath, Henry was busily weaving the best words he could find into a sonnet to accompany the wreath. When Angel duly brought him his lunch, it was finished, and lay about on his desk in rags and tatters of composition. Angel was going to the performance with her sisters,--for all these young people were fond of advertising each other, and he had soon told her about Mike,--so she was interested to hear the sonnet. Whatever other qualities poetry may lack, the presence of generous sincerity will always give it a certain value, to all but the merely supercilious; and this sonnet, boyish in its touches of grandiloquence, had yet a certain pathos of strong feeling about it. Not unto him alone whom loud acclaim Declares the victor does the meed belong, For others, standing silent in the throng, May well be worthier of a nobler fame; And so, dear friend, although unknown thy name Unto the shouting herd, we would give tongue To our deep thought, and the world's great among By this symbolic laurel thee proclaim. And if, perchance, the herd shall find thee out In coming time, and many a nobler crown To one they love to honour gladly throw; Wilt thou not turn thee from their eager shout, And whisper o'er these leaves, then sere and brown: 'Thou'rt late, O world! love knew it long ago?' The reader will probably agree with Angel in considering the last line the best. But, of course, she thought the whole was wonderful. "How wonderful it must be to be able to write!" she said, with a look in her face which was worth all the books ever written. "And how wonderful even to have something written to one like that!" "Surely that must have happened to you," said Henry, slyly. "You're only laughing at me." "No, I'm not. You don't know what may have been written to you. Poems may quite well have been written to you without your having heard of them. The poet mayn't have thought them worthy of you." "What nonsense! Why, I don't know any poets!" "Oh!" said Henry. "I mean, except you." "And how do you know that I haven't written a whole book full of poems to you? I've known you--how long now?" "Two months next Monday," said Angel, with that chronological accuracy on such matters which seems to be a special gift of women in love. Men in love are nothing like so accurate. "Well, that's long enough, isn't it? And I've had nothing else to do, you know." "But you don't care enough about me?" "You never know." "But tell me really, have you written something for me?" "Ah, you'd like to know now, wouldn't you?" "Of course I would. Tell me. It would make me very happy." "It really would?" "You know it would." "But why?" "It would." "But you couldn't care for the poetry, unless you cared for the poet?"