He placed his poem between the photograph and the letter, closed the box, and tied the tissue-paper about it again with the blue ribbon.  Throughout these rites (they were rites both in spirit and in manner) he was subject to little catchings of the breath, half gulp, half sigh.  But the dolorous tokens passed, and he sat with elbows upon the table, his chin upon his hands, reverie in his eyes.  Tragedy had given way to gentler pathos;—­beyond question, something had measurably soothed him.  Possibly, even in this hour preceding the hour of parting, he knew a little of that proud amazement which any poet is entitled to feel over each new lyric miracle just wrought.

Perhaps he was helped, too, by wondering what Miss Pratt would think of him when she read “In Dream,” on the train that afternoon.  For reasons purely intuitive, and decidedly without foundation in fact, he was satisfied that no rival farewell poem would be offered her, and so it may be that he thought “In Dream” might show her at last, in one blaze of light, what her eyes had sometimes fleetingly intimated she did perceive in part—­the difference between William and such every-day, rather well-meaning, fairly good-hearted people as Joe Bullitt, Wallace Banks, Johnnie Watson, and others.  Yes, when she came to read “In Dream,” and to “look back upon it all,” she would surely know—­at last!

And then, when the future four long years (while receiving his education) had passed, he would go to her.  He would go to her, and she would take him by the hand, and lead him to her father, and say, “Father, this is William.”

But William would turn to her, and, with the old, dancing light in his eyes, “No, Lola,” he would say, “not William, but Ickle Boy Baxter!  Always and always, just that for you; oh, my dear!”

And then, as in story and film and farce and the pleasanter kinds of drama, her father would say, with kindly raillery, “Well, when you two young people get through, you’ll find me in the library, where I have a pretty good business proposition to lay before you, young man!”

And when the white-waistcoated, white-side-burned old man had, chuckling, left the room, William would slowly lift his arms; but Lola would move back from him a step—­only a step—­and after laying a finger archly upon her lips to check him, “Wait, sir!” she would say.  “I have a question to ask you, sir!”

“What question, Lola?”

“This question, sir!” she would reply.  “In all that summer, sir, so long ago, why did you never tell me what you were, until I had gone away and it was too late to show you what I felt?  Ah, Ickle Boy Baxter, I never understood until I looked back upon it all, after I had read ‘In Dream,’ on the train that day!  Then I knew!” “And now, Lola?” William would say.  “Do you understand me, now?”

Shyly she would advance the one short step she had put between them, while he, with lifted, yearning arms, this time destined to no disappointment——­