Page:Daskam Bacon--Whom the gods destroy.djvu/97

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WHEN PIPPA PASSED

"And the new poem?" Delafield inquired, "did you get it done? That was to be the last, wasn't it?"

"Oh! I haven't been writing lately," he explained, blushing a little. "I've been too busy—that is, I've been too—I've been thinking of something else." He stood before them in the full light of the late day; every expression in his sensitive, mobile face showed clear.

"A perfectly wonderful thing has happened," he burst out, "you couldn't understand. Nobody can understand but me, and—and——"

"Who is she?" said Delafield bluntly.

"How did you know?" cried the boy, "have you seen—did she tell——"

"Of course not. When did it happen?"

Delafield kept his face persistently from Anne's. For the world he could not have looked at her.

"It was last week." West was smiling eagerly at him, ignoring the woman's presence.

"I went into the grocer's to do an errand for Mr. Swazey, and she was behind the little grating—you pay her. She is the cashier. I didn't take

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