ey gushed over were written. It was much the same thing
he remembered having seen his father undergo in the days when he and
the opera singer were together. And his father had, apparently, rather
enjoyed it. He realized all this--and he realized, too, with a queer
feeling that it should be so, that he did not like it at all. It was
silly. Nothing he had written warranted such extravagances. Hadn't these
people any sense of proportion? They bored him to desperation. The sole
relief was the behavior of the men, particularly the middle-aged or
elderly men, obviously present through feminine compulsion. They seized
his hand, moved it up and down with a pumping motion, uttered some
stereotyped prevarications about their pleasure at meeting him and their
having enjoyed his poems very much, and then slid on in the direction of
the refreshment room.

And Albert, as he shook hands, bowed and smiled and was charmingly
affable, found his thoughts wandering until they settled upon Private
Mike Kelly and the picturesque language of the latter when he, as
sergeant, routed him out for guard duty. Mike had not gushed over him
nor called him a genius. He had called him many things, but not that.

He was glad indeed when he could slip away for a dance with Madeline. He
found her chatting gaily with Captain Blanchard, who had been her most
recent partner. He claimed her from the captain and as he led her out to
the dance floor she whispered that she was very proud of him. "But I DO
wish YOU could wear your war cross," she added.

The quite informal affair was the first of many quite as informally
formal. Also Mrs. Fosdick's satellites and friends of the literary clubs
and the war work societies seized the opportunity to make much of the
heroic author of The Lances of Dawn. His society was requested at teas,
at afternoon as well as evening gatherings. He would have refused most
of these invitations, but Madeline and her mother seemed to take his
acceptance for granted; in fact, they accepted for him. A ghastly
habit developed of asking him to read a few of his own poems on these
occasions. "PLEASE, Mr. Speranza. It will be such a treat, and such an
HONOR." Usually a particular request was made that he read "The Greater
Love." Now "The Greater Love" was the poem which, written in those
rapturous days when he and Madeline first became aware of their mutual
adoration, was refused by one editor as a "trifle too syrupy." To read
that sticky e