“Never.  The story is a romantic one,” said Perkins, with a smile that was half complacent and yet half embarrassed.  “May I tell it to you?  Thanks.  Some three years ago I contributed some verses to the columns of a Western paper edited by a friend of mine.  The subject chosen was my favorite one, ‘The Liberation of Mankind,’ in which I may possibly have expressed myself with some poetic fervor on a theme so dear to my heart.  I may remark without vanity, that it received high encomiums—­perhaps at some more opportune moment you may be induced to cast your eyes over a copy I still retain—­but no praise touched me as deeply as a tribute in verse in another journal from a gifted unknown, who signed herself ‘Euphemia.’  The subject of the poem, which was dedicated to myself, was on the liberation of women—­from—­er—­I may say certain domestic shackles; treated perhaps vaguely, but with grace and vigor.  I replied a week later in a larger poem, recording more fully my theories and aspirations regarding a struggling Central American confederacy, addressed to ‘Euphemia.’  She rejoined with equal elaboration and detail, referring to a more definite form of tyranny in the relations of marriage, and alluding with some feeling to uncongenial experiences of her own.  An instinct of natural delicacy, veiled under the hyperbole of ‘want of space,’ prevented my editorial friend from encouraging the repetition of this charming interchange of thought and feeling.  But I procured the fair stranger’s address; we began a correspondence, at once imaginative and sympathetic in expression, if not always poetical in form.  I was called to South America by the Macedonian cry of ‘Quinquinambo!’ I still corresponded with her.  When I returned to Quinquinambo I received letters from her, dated from San Francisco.  I feel that my words could only fail, my dear Hurlstone, to convey to you the strength and support I derived from those impassioned breathings of aid and sympathy at that time.  Enough for me to confess that it was mainly due to the deep womanly interest that she took in the fortunes of the passengers of the Excelsior that I gave the Mexican authorities early notice of their whereabouts.  But, pardon me,”—­he stopped hesitatingly, with a slight flush, as he noticed the utterly inattentive face and attitude of Hurlstone,—­“I am boring you.  I am forgetting that this is only important to myself,” he added, with a sigh.  “I only intended to ask your advice in regard to the disposition of certain manuscripts and effects of hers, which are unconnected with our acquaintance.  I thought, perhaps, I might entrust them to your delicacy and consideration.  They are here, if you choose to look them over; and here is also what I believe to be a daguerreotype of the lady herself, but in which I fail to recognize her soul and genius.”

He laid a bundle of letters and a morocco case on the table with a carelessness that was intended to hide a slight shade of disappointment in his face—­and rose.