Don't you like
to think of Ned so loyally protecting your interests in your absence?
His criticisms are, I suppose, based on the attentions of a nice little
boy just out of college, who calls me 'Helen,' and writes sonnets to me
which are to appear in the most literary of weeklies. Look out for them.
They are good, and may raise your low estimate of my charms. The best
one begins:

"When the blond wonder first on Paris dawned--

"Isn't that pretty?

"Write to me. At least send me a blank envelope that I may leave
ostentatiously on my desk.

"Yours at the moment,

"CHRISTINE."

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.