"Put it back, don't you think? If you wrote out such words and left them
in a book, you would want them to stay there, not to be looked at
curiously by other eyes fifty years after."
"That's somebody's heart there on that sheet of old paper," said he.
Apparently he was looking at the paper; in reality he was stealing a
glance past it at her down-bent face.
"Not necessarily. Somebody may merely have been attracted by the music
of the lines. Put it back, Mr. Secretary, and concern yourself with
Judge Cahill. It's to be hoped that you won't find any more distracting
verse between his pages."
"Why not? Oughtn't one to get all the poetry one can out of life?"
"Not in business hours."
He laughed in spite of himself at the failure of his effort to make her
self-conscious by any reading of such lines in his presence. Clearly she
meant to allow no personal relation to arise between them while they
were thrown together by Judge Gray's need of them. She fell to typing
again with even more energy than before, if that were possible, while
he--it must be confessed that before he laid the verses away between the
pages for another fifty years' sleep he had made note of their identity,
that he might look them up again in a seldom opened copy of the English
poet on his shelves at home.
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