"I know a little of their ways that are dark," he interpolated, thinking at the moment of the United News Bureau.
"But this is only one of the thousand and one tricks of a very tricky trade. And it really amounts to about the same thing as the signed article young reporters write for an illiterate prize-fighter or a rather stupid prima donna. At any rate, is it any worse?"
"But would there be any means of finally correcting the—the error of authorship?" he asked.
"Is it the loss of the poem?" she began.
"In one way it is, perhaps, and in another way it isn't."
But was this ethical Cæsarean section, he wondered, the only means of bringing his belated offspring to light?
"I can understand that; it's a beautiful thing."
"But if I have written one I still have the power to write another." It was the master losing himself in the message, the parent dying for the child.
"Of course, but you mustn't—please don't think for one moment that I want to lay claim to it, now or at any time. I'm not a poetess, as you know, and never could be one."
He fell to pacing the room once more.