nevertheless Sibley was somehow
sure that his real name was not Sanbourne. He was sure that the inner
truth of the man, if it could but be known, was a contradiction of the
rough and strange outside; and he wished so intensely to get at the
hidden inner side that he could not resist opening the parcel there and
then.

Never had Eversedge Sibley seen such a manuscript. He was used to
clearly typed pages of uniform size, as easy to read as print. This was
written partly with pencil, partly with pen and ink, apparently three
or four different kinds of pens, each worse than the other. The paper,
too, consisted of odds and ends. The whole thing suggested poverty and
the meager condition of a steerage passenger. But this squalor, which
in most circumstances would have caused Sibley to fling down the stuff
in fastidious disgust, sent a thrill through him. No ordinary man with
ordinary things to say could have had the courage to struggle through
such difficulties, to any desired end. The longing to tell this story,
whatever it was, must have been strong in the man's soul as the urge of
travail in the body of a woman.

In spite of the mean materials, the writing was clear, and
suggested--it seemed to the mood of Sibley--something of the man's
strength and intense reserve.

"'The War Wedding,'" he read at the top of the first page. "Heavens, I
hope it's not going to be in blank verse!"

It was not in blank verse. He had to read only the first lines to
assure himself of that.

The story began with the description of a garden. It was simply done,
but it painted a picture, and--praise be to the powers, there were no
split infinitives nor gush of adjectives! Eversedge Sibley saw the
garden. He was the man who walked in it, and met the girl who came down
the stone steps between the blue borders of lavender. The story became
his story. For an hour he forgot his office, his waiting chauffeur, and
everything else that belonged to him.

So he might have gone on forgetting, if Stephen Eversedge, his junior
partner and cousin, had not peeped anxiously in at the door. "They said
you'd gone away and then come back. I thought I'd just ask if anything
was the matter," he excused himself to the master mind.

"The matter is, we've got hold of the most wonderful human
document--good God, yes, and _soul_ document!--that any house in this
country or any other has ever published!" The words burst out from
Sibley like bullets from a _mitraill