Clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing.

‘How much do you know?’ Septimus asked desperately.

‘The yew tree in the garden,’ said Clovis.

‘There! I felt certain I’d dropped it somewhere. But you must have guessed something before. Look here, you have surprised my secret. You won’t give me away, will you? It is nothing to be ashamed of, but it wouldn’t do for the editor of the Cathedral Monthly to go in openly for that sort of thing, would it?’

‘Well, I suppose not,’ admitted Clovis.

‘You see,’ continued Septimus, ‘I get quite a decent lot of money out of it. I could never live in the style I do on what I get as editor of the Cathedral Monthly.’

Clovis was even more startled than Septimus had been earlier in the conversation, but he was better skilled in repressing surprise.

‘Do you mean to say you get money out of—Florrie?’ he asked.

‘Not out of Florrie, as yet,’ said Septimus; ‘in fact, I don’t mind saying that I’m having a good deal of trouble over Florrie. But there are a lot of others.’

Clovis’s cigarette went out.

‘This is very interesting,’ he said slowly. And then, with Septimus Brope’s next words, illumination dawned on him.

‘There are heaps of others; for instance:

That was one of my earliest successes, and it still brings me in royalties. And then there is—“Esmeralda, when I first beheld her,” and “Fair Teresa, how I love to please her,” both of those have been fairly popular. And there is one rather dreadful one,’ continued Septimus, flushing deep carmine, ‘which has brought me in more money than any of the others:

Of course, I loathe the whole lot of them; in fact, I’m rapidly becoming something of a woman-hater under their influence, but I can’t afford to disregard the financial aspect of the matter. And at the same time you can understand that my position as an authority on ecclesiastical architecture and liturgical subjects would be weakened, if not altogether ruined, if it once got about that I was the author of “Cora with the lips of coral” and all the rest of them.’

Clovis had recovered sufficiently to ask in a sympathetic, if rather unsteady, voice what was the special trouble with ‘Florrie.’

‘I can’t get her into lyric shape, try as I will,’ said Septimus mournfully. ‘You see, one has to work in a lot of sentimental, sugary compliment with a catchy rhyme, and a certain amount of personal biography or prophecy. They’ve all of them got to have a long string of past successes recorded about them, or else you’ve got to foretell blissful things about them and yourself in the future. For instance, there is: