“But, Dickie—­your—­words?  I’d like to see something you’ve written.”

Dickie’s hand went to an inner pocket.

“I wanted you to see this, Sheila,” His eyes were lowered to hide a flaming pride.  “My poems.”

Sheila felt a shock of dread.  Dickie’s poems!  She was afraid to read them.  She could not help but think of his life at Millings, of that sordid hotel lobby ...  Newspaper stories—­yes—­that was imaginable.  But—­poetry?  Sheila had been brought up on verse.  There was hardly a beautiful line that had not sung itself into the fabric of her brain.

“Poems?” she repeated, just a trifle blankly; then, seeing the hurt in his face, about the sensitive and delicate lips, she put out a quick, penitent hand.  “Let me see them—­at once!”

He handed a few folded papers to her.  They were damp.  He put his face down to his hands and looked at the floor as though he could not bear to watch her face.  Sheila saw that he was shaking.  It meant so much to him, then—?  She unfolded the papers shrinkingly and read.  As she read, the blood rushed to her checks for shame.  She ought never to have doubted him.  Never after the first look into his face, never after hearing him speak of the “cold, white flame” of an unforgotten winter night.  Dickie’s words, so greatly loved and groped for, so tirelessly pursued in the face of his world’s scorn and injury, came to him, when they did come, on wings.  In the four short poems, there was not a word outside of his inner experience, and yet she felt that those words had blown through him mysteriously on a wind—­the wind that fans such flame—­

“Oh, little song you sang to me
A hundred, hundred days ago,
Oh, little song whose melody
Walks in my heart and stumbles so;
I cannot bear the level nights,
And all the days are over-long,
And all the hours from dark to dark
Turn to a little song—­”

“Like the beat of the falling rain,
Until there seems no roof at all,
And my heart is washed with pain—­”

“Why is a woman’s throat a bird,
White in the thicket of the years?—­”

Sheila suddenly thrust back the leaves at him, hid her face and fell to crying bitterly.  Dickie let fall his poems; he hovered over her, utterly bewildered, utterly distressed.

“Sheila—­h-how could they possibly hurt you so?  It was your song—­your song—­Are you angry with me—?  I couldn’t help it.  It kept singing in me—­It—­it hurt.”

She thrust his hand away.

“Don’t be kind to me!  Oh—­I am ashamed!  I’ve treated you so!  And—­and snubbed you.  And—­and condescended to you, Dickie.  And shamed you.  You—!  And you can write such lines—­and you are great—­you will be very great—­a poet!  Dickie, why couldn’t I see?  Father would have seen.  Don’t touch me, please!  I can’t bear it.  Oh, my dear, you must have been through such long, long misery—­there in Millings, behind that desk—­all stifled and cramped and shut in.  And when I came, I might have helped you.  I might have understood ...  But I hurt you more.”