THE POEM
63
VAUGHAN.
Esmé, I am here, your father.
ESME.
Ah! it comes back. He is dead. Oh,
God! Oh, God! And we were to have
been married a month to-day.
VAUGHAN.
And he left the poem and could not finish
it.
. finished—it is finished !
EsME [potnting to scattered papers on
a table}.
What have you been doing with those
papers, father?
VAUGHAN [astonished].
They are not mine, child. I did not see
them till you showed me. [7Zaking papers.]
Why, they are in your handwriting; what
arethey? [Reading, cradually becomes aware
that something strange has happened.| It is
[ Curtazn.