I was puzzled for a moment; then: “Why, poetry ... rather a free form, of course.... You see, he was an originator of new verse-forms....”
“New verse-forms?” Delane echoed forlornly. He stood up in his heavy way, but did not offer to take the book from me again. I saw in his face the symptoms of approaching departure.
“Well, I’m glad to have seen his picture after all these years,” he said; and on the threshold he paused to ask: “What was his name, by the way?”
When I told him he repeated it with a smile of slow relish. “Yes; that’s it. Old Walt—that was what all the fellows used to call him. He was a great chap: I’ll never forget him.—I rather wish, though,” he added, in his mildest tone of reproach, “you hadn’t told me that he wrote all that rubbish.”
THE END
