luck!" Winsor exclaimed as they started down the hall. "I'm
off Allen for good. That boy wins big pots too regularly and always
loses the little ones. I bet he's a cold-deck artist or something."

"He's something all right," Hugh agreed. "Cripes, I feel dirty and
stinko. I feel as if I'd been in a den."

"You have been. Say, what's that?" They had almost traversed the length
of the long hall when Winsor stopped suddenly, taking Hugh by the arm. A
door was open, and they could hear somebody reading.

"What's what?" Hugh asked, a little startled by the suddenness of
Winsor's question.

"Listen. That poem, I've heard it somewhere before. What is it?"

Hugh listened a moment and then said: "Oh, that's the poem Prof Blake
read us the other day--you know, 'marpessa.' It's about the shepherd,
_Apollo_, and _Marpessa_. It's great stuff. Listen."

They remained standing in the deserted hall, the voice coming clearly to
them through the open doorway. "It's Freddy Fowler," Winsor whispered.
"He can sure read."

The reading stopped, and they heard Fowler say to some one, presumably
his room-mate: "This is the part that I like best. Get it," Then he read
_Idas's_ plea to _Marpessa_:

"'After such argument what can I plead?
Or what pale promise make? Yet since it is
In women to pity rather than to aspire,
A little I will speak. I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom, all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
Nor for that face that might indeed provoke
Invasion of old cities; no, nor all
Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep.'"

Winsor's hand tightened on Hugh's arm, and the two boys stood almost
rigid listening to the young voice, which was trembling with emotion,
rich with passion:

"'Not only for this do I love thee, but
Because Infinity upon thee broods;
And thou are full of whispers and of shadows.
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say
So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell;