"The Podley Pure Literature Institute.
Dear Mr. Lothian:
I am so proud and happy to have met you to-night. I am so sorry that I had not the chance of telling you what your poems have been to me—though of course you must always be hearing that sort of thing. So I will say nothing more, but ask you, only, to put your name in my copy of "Surgit Amari" and thus make it more precious—if that is possible—than before.
Mr. Ingworth has kindly promised to give you this note and the book.
Yours sincerely,
Rita Wallace."
The letter dropped unheeded upon the carpet. Thick tears began to roll down Lothian's swollen face.
"Mary! Mary!" he said aloud, "I want you, I want you!" . . .
"Darling! there is no one else in the world but you."
He was calling for his wife, always so good and kind to him, his dear and loving wife. At the end of his long foul day, lived without a thought of her, he was calling for her help and comfort like a sick child.