kman looked depressed.

The sound of Poppy's song waked the canary; he fluttered down from his
perch and stretched his wings, trailing them on the floor of his cage
to brush the sleep out of them.

"Did you ever see such affectation," said Poppy, "look at him,
striking attitudes up there, all by 'is little self!"

Poppy seemed to cling to the idea of the canary as a symbol of
propriety.

"Do you know, Rickets, it's past twelve o'clock?"

No, he didn't know. He had taken no count of time. But he knew that he
had drunk a great many little tumblers of champagne, and that his love
for Poppy seemed more than ever a supersensuous and immortal thing. He
pulled himself together in order to tell her so; but at that moment he
was confronted by an insuperable difficulty. In the tender and
passionate speech that he was about to make to her, it would be
necessary to address her by name. But how--in Heaven's name--could he
address a divinity as Poppy? He settled the difficulty by deciding
that he would not address her at all. There should be no invocation.
He would simply explain.

He got up and walked about the room and explained in such words as
pleased him the distinction between the corruptible and the
incorruptible Eros. From time to time he chanted his own poems in the
intervals of explaining; for they bore upon the matter in hand.

"Rickets," said Poppy, severely, "you've had too much fizz. I can see
it in your eyes--most unmistakably. I know it isn't very nice of me to
say so, when it's my fizz you've been drinking; but it isn't really
mine, it's Dicky Pilkington's--at least he paid for it."

But Rickets did not hear her. His soul, soaring on wings of champagne,
was borne far away from Dicky Pilkington.

"Know" (chanted Rickets) "that the Love which is my Lord most high,
He changeth not with seasons and with days,
His feet are shod with light in all his ways.
And when he followeth none have power to fly.

"He chooseth whom he will, and draweth nigh.
To them alone whom he himself doth raise
Unto his perfect service and his praise;
Of such Love's lowliest minister am I."

"If you'd asked me," said Poppy, "I should have said he had a pretty
good opinion of himself. What do you say, Dicky?"

"Sweet!" sang the canary in one pure, penetrating note, the voice of
Innocence itself.

"Isn't he rakish?" But Poppy got no answer from the sonneteer. He had
wheeled round from her, ca