M'Corkle and I never met--we were personally unknown to each other.
You may have observed the epithet 'unmet' in the first line of the first
stanza; you will then understand that the privation of actual contact
with this magnetic soul would naturally impart more difficulty into
elegiac expression."
"Then you never really saw the lady you admire?" said Hurlstone
vacantly.
"Never. The story is a romantic one," said Perkins, with a smile that
was half complacent and yet half embarrassed. "May I tell it to you?
Thanks. Some three years ago I contributed some verses to the columns
of a Western paper edited by a friend of mine. The subject chosen was my
favorite one, 'The Liberation of Mankind,' in which I may possibly have
expressed myself with some poetic fervor on a theme so dear to my heart.
I may remark without vanity, that it received high encomiums--perhaps at
some more opportune moment you may be induced to cast your eyes over a
copy I still retain--but no praise touched me as deeply as a tribute
in verse in another journal from a gifted unknown, who signed herself
'Euphemia.' The subject of the poem, which was dedicated to myself,
was on the liberation of women--from--er--I may say certain domestic
shackles; treated perhaps vaguely, but with grace and vigor.
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