"There!" said Lemoyne to
the weary Cope at eleven o'clock; "it ought to have been written a month
ago."
Cope languidly slipped the oft-amended sheet under his pile of themes and
in a spent voice suggested bed.
Over night and through the following forenoon the draft lay on his desk.
When he returned to his room at three o'clock a note, which had been
delivered by hand, awaited him. It was from Amy Leffingwell.
Cope read it, folded his arms on his desk, bowed his head on his arms, and,
being alone, gave a half-sob. Then he lifted his head, with face illumined
and soul refreshed. Amy had asked for an end to their engagement.
"What does she say?" asked Lemoyne, an hour later.
"She says what you say!" exclaimed Cope with shining eyes and a trace of
half-hysteric bravado. "She does not feel that we are quite so well suited
to each other as we ought to be, nor that her feeling toward me is what
love really... Can she have been in dramatics too!"
"Your letter," returned Lemoyne, with dignity, "would have been
understood."
"Quite so," Cope acknowledged, in a kind of exultant excitation. He caught
the rough draft from his desk--it was all seared with new emendations--tore
it up, and threw the fragments into the waste-basket.
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