Mostly he wrote them between acts at the theatre, or in any public place where something in which he was not interested was going on.
Of all that read them, and here was a Nemesis awful in justice, there was not one less moved by them than she who had inspired them.

She saw in them, it is true, a reflex of her own power--and that pleased, but it did not move her.

She took the devotion and pocketed it, as a greedy boy might an orange or bull's-eye.

The verses in which Tom delighted were but the merest noise in the ears of the lady to whom of all he would have had them acceptable.

One momentary revelation as to how she regarded them would have been enough to release him from his foolish enthrallment.