"Friends!" he cried, and gave a bitter laugh. "I was never friends
with you, Margaret. Why, even as I read my verses to you--those
pallid, ineffectual verses that praised you timorously under varied
names--even then there pulsed in my veins the riotous pæan of love,
the great mad song of love that shamed my paltry rhymes. I cannot be
friends with you, child! I must have all or nothing. Bid me hope or
go!"
Miss Hugonin meditated for a moment and did neither.
"Beautiful," she presently queried, "would you be very, very much
shocked if I descended to slang?"