oo familiar with Clematis traditions
not to know that the books on the center-table were seldom of a sort
one would care to open, but as she lifted the nearest volume and saw
that it was a collections of poems, she felt a comforting certainty
that luck was with her.

"You're a great admirer of po'try, ain't you, Mr. Dale? I've always
understood so."

With an effort Joel roused himself.

"Another has expressed my sentiments, Miss Fitzgerald.

"Verse sweetens toil, however rude the sound.'"

"Then if you'd like, I'll read you a little so's to help pass the
time." Susan seated herself near the window, cleared her throat and
opening the volume at random, began in the self-conscious and unnatural
voice characterizing ninety-nine people out of every hundred who
attempt the reading of verse.

"'O there's a heart for every one
If every one could find it.
Then up and seek, ere youth is gone,
Whate'er the task, ne'er mind it.
For if you chance to meet at last
With that one heart intended--'"

Susan's voice had grown husky. She cleared her throat again. "I'm
afraid I made a poor selection," she apologized. "You see I'm not as
familiar with po'try as you are, Mr. Dale." She turned the leaves in a
confusion that increased as her groping vision stumbled continually on
lines startlingly sentimental.

"'Let thy love in kisses rain
On my cheeks and eye-lids pale.'"

Susan opened ten pages ahead and tried again.

"'When stars are in the quiet skies,
Then most I pine for thee.
Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes,
As stars look on the sea.'"

Joel's change of position was subtly suggestive of weariness. Susan
whirled the leaves and took a desperate plunge.

"'Ask if I love thee? O, smiles can not tell
Plainer what tears are now showing too well.
Had I not loved thee my sky had been clear;
Had I not loved thee, I had not been here.'"

It was plainly impossible for a self-respecting single woman to
continue. "Why, they're all silly," she exclaimed, with a little
nervous giggle. Her face flamed. What was she to say next, not only
to carry out Persis Dale's injunction, but to occupy the blank silence
which contradictorily seemed echoing with that fateful refrain, "Had I
not loved thee I had not been here."

When in doubt, play trumps. Susan Fitzgerald's chief interest in life
was the question of woman's suffrage. And the confusion which had
swept