Mr. Aram crossed one leg over the other and folded his hands in his lap.
He exhibited no interest, and looked drowsily at the editor. When he
spoke it was in a tone of unstudied indifference. "I never wrote a poem
called 'Bohemia,'" he said, slowly; "at least, if I did I don't remember
it."

The editor had not expected a flat denial, and it irritated him, for he
recognized it to be the safest course the man could pursue, if he kept
to it. "But you don't mean to say," he protested, smiling, "that you can
write so excellent a poem as 'Bohemia' and then forget having done so?"

"I might," said Mr. Aram, unresentfully, and with little interest. "I
scribble a good deal."

"Perhaps," suggested the reporter, politely, with the air of one who is
trying to cover up a difficulty to the satisfaction of all, "Mr. Aram
would remember it if he saw it."

The editor nodded his head in assent, and took the first page of the two
on which the poem was written, and held it out to Mr. Aram, who accepted
the piece of foolscap and eyed it listlessly.

"Yes, I wrote that," he said. "I copied it out of a book called _Gems
from American Poets_." There was a lazy pause. "But I never sent it to
any paper." The editor and the reporter eyed each other with outward
calm but with some inward astonishment. They could not see why he had
not adhered to his original denial of the thing _in toto_. It seemed to
them so foolish, to admit having copied the poem and then to deny having
forwarded it.