e, and
somehow he put new courage into her heart.

Presently she went into the study and lit the Welsbach over the table,
and curled herself up in Simeon's great chair to enjoy her
periodicals, and then her eye fell upon a parcel of proof, directed
but not sent, and she read the address, weighed and stamped the
package, and rang the bell for the servant to post it. As she took up
her magazine once more, she noticed on the outside cover the same name
of street and building as on Simeon's direction, and she wondered
whether the same publishers lent themselves to fact and fancy.

Her servant brought her something to eat on a tray--women left to
themselves always find economy in discomfort--and she nibbled her
chicken and read her stories till she felt surfeited with both, and
fell to pondering on what made a story effective. Her eye lit upon a
short poem at the end of a page; it seemed to her poor to
banality--did it please the public or the editor? Her own verses were
a thousand times better.

She sat up suddenly with a heightened color and shining eyes, and
laughed out loud. She had an inspiration. She, too, would become a
contributor to that great publishing output; she would try her luck at
making her brains pay her bills. The name "Mrs. Simeon Ponsonby" would
carry weight with the magazine she selected, but, while disclosing her
identity to the editor, she determined to choose a pen name, fearing
her husband's disapproval.

From childhood Deena had loved to express herself in rhyme, and of
late years she had found her rhyming--so she modestly called it--a
safety valve to a whole set of repressed feelings which she was too
simple to recognize as starved affections, and which she thought was
nature calling to her from without. It was nature, but calling from
within, thrilling her with the beauty of things sensuous and driving
her for sympathy to pen and ink.

Tossing down her book, she ran to her own room, unlocked a drawer,
took out an old portfolio and returned to the study. There were,
perhaps, twenty poems she had thought worth preserving, and her eye
traveled over page after page as she weighed the merits and defects of
each before making her choice. A sensitive ear had given her admirable
imitative powers in versification, and her father, before dissipation
had dulled his intellect, had been a man of rare cultivation and
literary taste. Deena, among all his children, was the only one whose
education he had