“A poem to me?”
“About us. Shall I read it?—now that the doubt is all over.”
He begged her read.
She was a space from his sight; then, bending down to him, in her hand paper of palest heliotrope, whispered to him by light of the beautiful moon:
“Our meeting! Do you remember, dear,
How Nature knew we met?
Twilight soft with a gentle breeze
Bearing scent of the slumbering seas;
Music sweet—'twas a nightingale,
Trilling and sobbing from laugh to wail—
Golden sky that was flecked with red
(Ribands of rose on a golden bed).
Ah, love! when first we met!”
She paused. “It was raining as a matter of fact, dearest,” she whispered, “and just after breakfast. But you know what I mean. That is the imagery of it—as it seemed to me.”
Bill said: “And to me; a beautiful imagery.”
She smiled in the modest pride of authorship: “Oh, it's nothing, really. You know how these things come. To you in prose, to me in song. One has to set them down.”
“One is merely the instrument,” Bill said.
“Yes, the instrument.” She hugged the phrase. “The instrument. How cleverly you put things!”