Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/66

 hung breathless on Solon's denunciations of me, whispered chattily with Eva Mclntyre during my rendition of "Bernardo del Carpio."

Later events, however, convinced me that I swam never in Solon's ken as a rival for her smiles. His own triumph was too easy, too widely heralded. In the second week of her coming, was there not a rhyme shouted on the playground, full in the hearing of both?

Was not this followed by one more subtle, more pointed, more ribald?

I thought there was an inhuman, a devilish deftness in the rhymes. The mighty mechanism of English verse had been employed to proclaim my remoteness from my love.

And yet the gods were once graciously good to me. One wondrous evening before hope died utterly I survived the ordeal of walking home with her from church.

She came with her uncle and aunt, and I, present by the gods permission, surmised that she might leave them and go to her own home alone when church was out. Through that service I worshipped