“My dear miss Stanley,” it began,—­“I hope you will forgive my bothering you with a letter, but I have been thinking very much over our conversation at Lady Palsworthy’s, and I feel there are things I want to say to you so much that I cannot wait until we meet again.  It is the worst of talk under such social circumstances that it is always getting cut off so soon as it is beginning; and I went home that afternoon feeling I had said nothing—­literally nothing—­of the things I had meant to say to you and that were coursing through my head.  They were things I had meant very much to talk to you about, so that I went home vexed and disappointed, and only relieved myself a little by writing a few verses.  I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggested by you.  You must forgive the poet’s license I take.  Here is one verse.  The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, to put you apart:  to change the lilt and the mood altogether when I speak of you.

     “’A song of ladies and my lady

     “’Saintly white and a lily is Mary,
     Margaret’s violets, sweet and shy;
     Green and dewy is Nellie-bud fairy,
     Forget-me-nots live in Gwendolen’s eye. 
     Annabel shines like a star in the darkness,
     Rosamund queens it a rose, deep rose;
     But the lady I love is like sunshine in April weather,
     She gleams and gladdens, she warms—­and goes.’

“Crude, I admit.  But let that verse tell my secret.  All bad verse—­originally the epigram was Lang’s, I believe—­is written in a state of emotion.

“My dear Miss Stanley, when I talked to you the other afternoon of work and politics and such-like things, my mind was all the time resenting it beyond measure.  There we were discussing whether you should have a vote, and I remembered the last occasion we met it was about your prospects of success in the medical profession or as a Government official such as a number of women now are, and all the time my heart was crying out within me, ‘Here is the Queen of your career.’  I wanted, as I have never wanted before, to take you up, to make you mine, to carry you off and set you apart from all the strain and turmoil of life.  For nothing will ever convince me that it is not the man’s share in life to shield, to protect, to lead and toil and watch and battle with the world at large.  I want to be your knight, your servant, your protector, your—­I dare scarcely write the word—­your husband.  So I come suppliant.  I am five-and-thirty, and I have knocked about in the world and tasted the quality of life.  I had a hard fight to begin with to win my way into the Upper Division—­I was third on a list of forty-seven—­and since then I have found myself promoted almost yearly in a widening sphere of social service.  Before I met you I never met any one whom I felt I could love, but you