“Seen anything of the Spinkses lately?”

“I called there last Saturday.”

“How is the divine Flossie?”

“Flourishing.  At least there’s another baby.  By the way Maddy you were grossly wrong about her there.  The Beaver is absolutely devoid of the maternal instinct.  She’s decent to the baby, but she’s positively brutal to Muriel Maud.  How Spinky—­He protests and there are horrid scenes; but through them all I believe the poor chap’s in love with her.”

“Curious illusion.”

Curious indeed.  It had seemed incredible to Rickman when he had seen the Beaver pushing her first-born from her knee.

“Good Heavens, Rickman, what a deliverance for you.”

“I wonder if he’s happy.”

“Can’t say; but possibly he holds his own.  You see, Spinky’s position is essentially sound.  My theory is—­”

But Rickman had no desire for a theory of marriage as propounded by Maddox.  He had always considered that in these matters Maddox was a brute.

Maddox drew his own conclusions from the disgusted protest.  He remembered how once, when he had warned Rickman of the love of little women, Rickman had said it was the great women who were dangerous.  The lady to whom he had entrusted the immortality of his Sonnets would be one of these.  As the guardian of that immortality Maddox conceived it was his duty to call on the lady and prevail on her to give them up.  Under all his loyalty he had the audacity of the journalist who sticks at nothing for his own glorious end.

There was after all a certain simplicity about Maddox.  He considered himself admirably equipped by nature for this delicate mission.  He was, besides, familiar with what he called the “society woman,” and he believed that he knew how to deal with her.  Maddox always had the air of being able to push his way anywhere by the aid of his mighty shoulders.  He sent in his card without a misgiving.

Lucia knew that Maddox was a friend of Keith Rickman’s, and she received him with a courtesy that would have disarmed a man less singularly determined.  It was only when he had stated his extraordinary purpose that her manner became such that (so he described it afterwards) it would have “set a worm’s back up.”  And Maddox was no worm.

It was a little while before Lucia realized that this rather overpowering visitor was requesting her to “give up” certain sonnets of Keith Rickman’s, written in ninety-three.  “I don’t quite understand.  Are you asking me to give you the manuscript or to give my consent to its publication?”

“Well—­both.  I have to ask you because he never would do it himself.”

“Why should he not?”

“Oh, well, you know his ridiculous notions of honour.”

“I do indeed.  I daresay some people would consider them ridiculous.”

It was this speech, Maddox confessed, that first set his back up.  He was irritated more by the calm assumption of proprietorship in Rickman than by the implied criticism of himself.