praised his poem--he would shrink in a more than deprecating
attitude: I might just as well have extolled him for seducing the
wife of his dearest friend. His later poems, of which he was
immodestly proud--"Sensations Captured on the Wing," he defined
them--left me cold and unsympathetic. So, for these reasons, the
boy and I had drifted apart. Until I had caught him in flagrante
delicto of walking with his arm round the waist of pretty Phyllis
Gedge, I had not seen him to speak to for a couple of months.

He came, however, after dinner, looking very sleek and handsome
and intellectual, and wearing a velvet dinner jacket which I did
not like. After we had gossiped awhile:--

"You said you were very busy?" I remarked.

He flicked off his cigarette ash and nodded.

"What at?"

"War poetry," he replied. "I am trying to supply the real note. It
is badly wanted. There are all kinds of stuff being written, but
all indifferent and valueless. If it has a swing, it's merely
vulgar, and what isn't vulgar is academic, commonplace. There's a
crying need for the high level poetry that shall interpret with
dignity and nobility the meaning of the war."

"Have you written much?"

"I have an ode every week in the Albemarle Review. I also write
the political article. Didn't you know? Haven't you seen them?"