had a note from Mrs. Jocelyn a few days ago."

"Did you?"

"I wonder if you would let me see your 'Songs of the Street,' she told
me about?"

"She spoke of them to you?"

"In the highest terms. Said she had no idea of your plans in regard to
them, but that the poems were strong and true."

"I am glad she liked them."

"Would you consider letting me have them for the magazine if they seemed
to fit our needs?"

"You can look them over, if you like. They won't fit, though. They'll
stick out like a sore thumb. The only editor I showed them to said they
weren't prose, and they weren't poetry, and, besides, he didn't
like them."

"Mail them to me to-night when you go home. Better still, bring them
in."

Jarvis drew out an envelope that he pushed across the table to Strong.

"Look them over now," he said.

Strong lifted his brows slightly, but took the proffered pages and began
to read. While his host was so busied, Jarvis smoked a good cigar, the
first in months, and enjoyed it. He didn't care whether Strong liked
them or not. Strong looked up suddenly.

"I'll take these, Jocelyn. What do you want for them?"

"Oh, I don't know. What are they worth to you?"

"I'll pay two hundred dollars for them. Is that satisfactory?"

"Perfectly."

"I'll mail you a check in the morning. I should say you have been
learning things, Jocelyn. That is good stuff."

"I told you I was getting a new point of view."

At the close of the evening the two men parted with a surreptitious
feeling that they would have liked each other under any other
circumstances. They promised to meet soon again. As for Jarvis, he felt
that a golden egg had been laid for him in the middle of the table on
the Astor roof! The one thing that stood out in his mind was the thought
that he could go home--home, to see Bambi. The only regret was that
Strong had made it possible.

XIX

The day came, in early December, when Bambi put the last word, the last
period, to her book. Instead of a moment of high relief and of pride, as
she had foreseen it, it was with a sigh of regret that she laid down her
pen. She felt as a mother might feel who sends her child out to make its
own way when she had put her last, finishing mother-touch upon his
training. There would never be another first book. No matter how crude
or how young this firstling might come to seem to her, there would never
be such another. No such thrills, no such building as made this
first-