Riatt’s first thought on laying down the letter was: “Hickson never in the world objected to any little poet just out of college, and she knows it very well. It’s Linburne he is worried about--Linburne, whose name she does not even mention.” And how absurd to attempt to make him believe she had cried all night. That was simply an untruth. Yet oddly enough, it came before his eyes in a more vivid picture than many a scene he had actually witnessed. A few minutes later he went to the club and looked up the literary weekly of which she had spoken. There was no sonnet in it, but the issue of the next week contained it. Riatt read it with an emotion he could not mistake. It brought Christine like a visible presence before him. Also it made him angry, to have to see her like this, through another man’s eyes. “Little whelp,” he said, “to detail a woman’s beauty in print like that! What does he know about it anyhow? I don’t believe for one second she looked at him like that.” The sonnet ended: She turned, a white embodiment of joy, And looking on him, sealed the doom of Troy. He was roused by a friendly shout in his ear. “Ho, ho, Max, reading poetry, are you? What love does for the worst of us!” It was Welsley, who snatched the paper out of his hand, running over the lines rapidly to himself: “Hem, hem, ‘carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.’ Some queen, that, eh? Have you had your dinner? Well, don’t be cross. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t read verse if you like. And this young man is the latest thing. My wife says they are going to import him here to speak to the Greek Study Club.” “I shall be curious to hear him, if the Greek Club will ask me,” said Max. “Oh, you’ll be in the East getting married,” answered Welsley. Strangely enough, it was with something like a pang that Max said to himself that he wouldn’t be. “Carnation, alabaster, gold and fire.” It was not a bad line, he thought. After dinner, he felt a little more amiable, and so he sat down and wrote his first real letter to his fiancée. “If we were really engaged, my dear Christine,” he wrote, “you would have had a night letter long before this, asking you to explain to me just how it was that you did look on that amorous young poet. His verse is pretty enough, though I can’t say I exactly enjoyed it. However, my native town thinks very highly of him, and intends to ask him to come and address one of our local organizations. If so, I shall have an opportunity of questioning him on the subject of the sources of his inspiration. ‘Is Helen a real person?’ I shall ask. ‘Not so very,’ I can imagine his replying. Ah, what would we both give to know?