She shrinks from me. “You!” she cries. “The author of my ruin; you, whose book I was dismissed for reading, unable to resist peering into the pages you had invested with such fatally fascinating charm....”
As the scene came up before me tears filled my eyes, and fearful that they might drop on my kidney and bacon I averted my head. At the same moment the waitress came back with a saucy giggle and resumed her post. I was somewhat dashed, nevertheless I decided it would do for a short story, and taking out my idea book I noted it down.
“Now,” I said, “let’s see the morning paper.... How lucky! The Garguantuan sails to-morrow. I’ll just catch her. Splendid!”
That histrionic temperament of mine began to thrill. Had not my whole life been dominated by my dramatic conception of myself? Student, actor, cowboy, I had played half a dozen parts, and into each I had put my whole heart. Here, then, was a new one: let me realise it quickly. So taken was I with the idea that I, who had never in my life known what it was to want a hundred dollars, retired to the reading-room, and, inspired by the kidney and bacon, took out a little gold pencil, and with it dinted in my idea book the following sonnet:
TO LITERATURE
“I, a poor, passion-goaded garreteer,
A pensive enervate of book and pen,
Who, in the bannered triumph-march of men
Lag like a sorry starveling in the rear—
Shall I not curse thee, mistress mine? I peer