"I won't trouble you with my 'rot' any more, Mr. Delafield," he said, with a boyish grandiloquence, "we'll see what other people have to say about it."
"Here, West, don't go away angry!" the older man urged, "I shouldn't have been so harsh. You've done such fine work that I couldn't bear——"
"Oh, hush your noise!" West interrupted, brutally, "neither can I bear! You've driven me to death between you all—you'll never see me again!" and he flung out of the room.
Delafield set his teeth. "This is too much," he said slowly. "The vulgar little cad! No, I won't go after him, Anne; let him fume it out himself. I'll try to ask D—— over next week, just the same."
But when Mr. D—— came over, full of pleasant anticipation, it was only to hear of the shocking death of the boy, whose photograph, taken from a cheap gilt locket of Pippa's, he afterward used over the popular gift-card, "Dawn on the River."
"Couldn't even shoot himself like a gentleman," said Delafield roughly. "Jumping seven stories—pah!"
"But the poems—the poems?" urged the publisher, "surely they——"
Anne took from the table an oblong tin biscuit-box and softly lifted the cover.
"Here are the poems," she said, pointing to a mass of fine, grey paper-ashes.