it is beginning; and I went home that afternoon
feeling I had said nothing--literally nothing--of the things I had meant
to say to you and that were coursing through my head. They were things I
had meant very much to talk to you about, so that I went home vexed and
disappointed, and only relieved myself a little by writing a few verses.
I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggested
by you. You must forgive the poet's license I take. Here is one verse.
The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, to
put you apart: to change the lilt and the mood altogether when I speak
of you.

"'A SONG OF LADIES AND MY LADY

"'Saintly white and a lily is Mary,
Margaret's violets, sweet and shy;
Green and dewy is Nellie-bud fairy,
Forget-me-nots live in Gwendolen's eye.
Annabel shines like a star in the darkness,
Rosamund queens it a rose, deep rose;
But the lady I love is like sunshine in April weather,
She gleams and gladdens, she warms--and goes.'

"Crude, I admit. But let that verse tell my secret. All bad
verse--originally the epigram was Lang's, I believe--is written in a
state of emotion.

"My dear Miss Stanley, when I talked to you the other afternoon of work
and politics and such-like things, my mind was all the time resenting it
beyond measure. There we were discussing whether you should have a vote,
and I remembered the last occasion we met it was about your prospects of
success in the medical profession or as a Government official such as a
number of women now are, and all the time my heart was crying out within
me, 'Here is the Queen of your career.' I wanted, as I have never wanted
before, to take you up, to make you mine, to carry you off and set you
apart from all the strain and turmoil of life. For nothing will ever
convince me that it is not the man's share in life to shield, to
protect, to lead and toil and watch and battle with the world at large.
I want to be your knight, your servant, your protector, your--I dare
scarcely write the word--your husband. So I come suppliant. I am
five-and-thirty, and I have knocked about in the world and tasted the
quality of life. I had a hard fight to begin with to win my way into the
Upper Division--I was third on a list of forty-seven--and since then I
have found myself promoted almost yearly in a widening sphere of social
service. Before I met you I never met any one whom I felt