“You were possibly glancing over these verses,” he said, with a hesitating and almost awkward diffidence, indicating the manuscript Hurlstone had just thrown aside.  “It is merely the first rough draft of a little tribute I had begun to a charming friend.  I sometimes,” he interpolated, with an apologetic smile, “trifle with the Muse.  Perhaps I ought not to use the word ‘trifle’ in connection with a composition of a threnodial and dirge-like character,” he continued deprecatingly.  “Certainly not in the presence of a gentleman as accomplished and educated as yourself, to whom recreation of this kind is undoubtedly familiar.  My occupations have been, unfortunately, of a nature not favorable to the indulgence of verse.  As a college man yourself, my dear sir, you will probably forgive the lucubrations of an old graduate of William and Mary’s, who has forgotten his ‘ars poetica.’  The verses you have possibly glanced at are crude, I am aware, and perhaps show the difficulty of expressing at once the dictates of the heart and the brain.  They refer to a dear friend now at peace.  You have perhaps, in happier and more careless hours, heard me speak of Mrs. Euphemia M’Corkle, of Illinois?”

Hurlstone remembered indistinctly to have heard, even in his reserved exclusiveness on the Excelsior, the current badinage of the passengers concerning Senor Perkins’ extravagant adulation of this unknown poetess.  As a part of the staple monotonous humor of the voyage, it had only disgusted him.  With a feeling that he was unconsciously sharing the burlesque relief of the passengers, he said, with a polite attempt at interest,

“Then the lady is—­no more?”

“If that term can be applied to one whose work is immortal,” corrected Senor Perkins gently.  “All that was finite of this gifted woman was lately forwarded by Adams’s Express Company from San Juan, to receive sepulture among her kindred at Keokuk, Iowa.”

“Did she say she was from that place?” asked Hurlstone, with half automatic interest.

“The Consul says she gave that request to the priest.”

“Then you were not with her when she died?” said Hurlstone absently.

“I was never with her, neither then nor before,” returned Senor Perkins gravely.  Seeing Hurlstone’s momentary surprise, he went on, “The late Mrs. M’Corkle and I never met—­we were personally unknown to each other.  You may have observed the epithet ‘unmet’ in the first line of the first stanza; you will then understand that the privation of actual contact with this magnetic soul would naturally impart more difficulty into elegiac expression.”

“Then you never really saw the lady you admire?” said Hurlstone vacantly.