DEAR SIR—Don't you remember, I was to meet you anyway on the steps of St. Paul's at ten o'clock next Sunday? I will wait till then for the message.—Yours faithfully,
JANE ELIZABETH MARTIN, 'Bus-conductor.
"That letter ought to put two and two together for him," she thought, "if he hasn't done it already. It's a complicated little sum, and the result is—what?"
She felt hot and feverish when she wrote the letter. And directly she had posted it she regretted having done so.
"I forget what I wrote," she said. "It is dangerous to post letters to
Older and Wiser Men when drunk."
All that night she lay awake and mourned the desertion of her
Secret Friend.
You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
You promised true, but we were very blind,
And very young, and in our ignorance
We never called to mind
That truth is seldom kind.
You promised love, immortal as a star.
You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
And, deathless, still we cry,
Nor hope for a reply.
You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
Behold a reaper strode across the field,
And man of woman born
Was gathered in as corn.
You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
You promised true. In joy we trembled lest
We should be found unworthy when it came;
But—oh—we never guessed
The fury of the test.