“My cousin,” he said. “My name is Rodney Spelvin. I do not share George’s histrionic ambitions. If I have any claim to—may I say renown?—it is as a maker of harmonies.”
“A composer, eh?”
“Verbal harmonies,” explained Mr. Spelvin. “I am, in my humble fashion, a poet.”
“He writes the most beautiful poetry,” said Jane, warmly. “He has just been reciting some of it to me.”
“Oh, that little thing?” said Mr. Spelvin, deprecatingly. “A mere morceau. One of my juvenilia.”
“It was too beautiful for words,” persisted Jane.
“Ah, you,” said Mr. Spelvin, “have the soul to appreciate it. I could wish that there were more like you, Miss Packard. We singers have much to put up with in a crass and materialistic world. Only last week a man, a coarse editor, asked me what my sonnet, ‘Wine of Desire,’ meant.” He laughed indulgently. “I gave him answer, ’twas a sonnet, not a mining prospectus.”
“It would have served him right,” said Jane, heatedly, “if you had pasted him one on the nose!”
At this point a low whistle behind me attracted my attention, and I turned to perceive William Bates towering against the sky-line.
“Hoy!” said William.