h and adamantine his
collar, against which a black butterfly had alighted and spread his
wings. Sammy's face--least important--was round and pleasant and
pinkish, and in his eyes you saw no haven for fleeing Romance.

That window of Ravenel's apartment opened upon an old garden full of
ancient trees and shrubbery. The apartment-house towered above one
side of it; a high brick wall fended it from the street; opposite
Ravenel's window an old, old mansion stood, half-hidden in the shade
of the summer foliage. The house was a castle besieged. The city
howled and roared and shrieked and beat upon its double doors, and
shook white, fluttering checks above the wall, offering terms of
surrender. The gray dust settled upon the trees; the siege was
pressed hotter, but the drawbridge was not lowered. No further will
the language of chivalry serve. Inside lived an old gentleman who
loved his home and did not wish to sell it. That is all the romance
of the besieged castle.

Three or four times every week came Sammy Brown to Ravenel's
apartment. He belonged to the poet's club, for the former Browns had
been conspicuous, though Sammy had been vulgarized by Business. He
had no tears for departed Romance. The song of the ticker was the
one that reached his heart, and when it came to matters equine and
batting scores he was something of a pink edition. He loved to sit
in the leather armchair by Ravenel's window. And Ravenel didn't mind
particularly. Sammy seemed to enjoy his talk; and then the broker's
clerk was such a perfect embodiment of modernity and the day's sordid
practicality that Ravenel rather liked to use him as a scapegoat.

"I'll tell you what's the matter with you," said Sammy, with the
shrewdness that business had taught him. "The magazine has turned
down some of your poetry stunts. That's why you are sore at it."

"That would be a good guess in Wall Street or in a campaign for the
presidency of a woman's club," said Ravenel, quietly. "Now, there
is a poem--if you will allow me to call it that--of my own in this
number of the magazine."

"Read it to me," said Sammy, watching a cloud of pipe-smoke he had
just blown out the window.

Ravenel was no greater than Achilles. No one is. There is bound to be
a spot. The Somebody-or-Other must take hold of us somewhere when she
dips us in the Something-or-Other that makes us invulnerable. He read
aloud this verse in the magazine:

THE FOUR ROSES

"One rose I twine