rm to crown your grace,
Your hair in one soft Titian cloud
Throws heavenly shadows on your face."

"Well, I've never had verses written to me before," Kitty remarked
demurely, when he had finished and sat looking at her questioningly.
"But 'dark depths'--that isn't the right thing to say of my eyes! And
Titian cloud of hair--is my hair Titian? I thought Titian hair
was bronzy-tawny was what Mr. Burlingame called it when he was
spouting,"--her upper lip curled in contempt.

"It isn't you, and you know it," he replied jerkily. She bridled.
"Do you mean to say that you come and read to me without a word of
explanation, so that I shouldn't misunderstand, verses written for
another? Am I to be told now that my eyes aren't eyes of light and eyes
of fire, that I haven't got a Grecian brow? Do you dare to say those
verses don't fit me--except for the Titian hair and heavenly shadows?
And that I've got no right to think they're meant for me? Is it so, that
a man that's lived in my mother's house for years, eating at the same
table with the family, and having his clothes mended free, with supper
to suit him and no questions asked--is it so, that he reads me poetry,
four lines at a stretch, and a rhyme every other line, and then
announces it isn't for me!"

Her eyes flashed, her bosom palpitated, her hand made passionate
gestures, and she really seemed a young fury let loose. For a moment
he was deceived by her acting; he did not see the lurking grin in the
depths of her eyes.

Her voice shook with assumed passion. "Because I didn't show what I felt
all these years, and only exposed my real feelings when you read those
verses to me, do you think any man who was a gentleman wouldn't in the
circumstances say, 'These verses are for you, Kitty Tynan'? You betrayed
me into showing you what I felt, and then you tell me your verses are
for another girl!"

"Girl! Girl! Girl!" he burst out. "Nurse is thirty-seven--she told me
so herself, and how could I tell that you--why, it's absurd! I've only
thought of you always as a baby in long skirts"--she spasmodically drew
her skirts down over her pretty, shapely ankles, while she kept her eyes
covered with one hand--"and you've seen me makin' up to her ever since
Crozier got the bullet. Ever since he was operated on, I've--"

"Yes, yes, that's right," she interrupted. "That's manly! Put the blame
on him--him that couldn't help himself, struck by a horse-thief's bullet
in