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And I saw the hot tears drop from his eyes. I saw them fall on the marble floor, and they watered the very spot where his name was so soon to spring up in pride to confess his handiwork.

I looked on her calm face. I knew she did not regret her part! I rose, and, without a word, I passed out at the wide door, and, without looking back, I passed down the slope in the dusk, and left them together–the woman I had loved, and the friend I had lost!

* * * * *

As his voice died away, he sat upright quickly, threw a glance about the circle, and, with another fine gesture said: ” Et voila !”

The Doctor was the only one to really laugh, though a broad grin ran round the circle.

“Well,” remarked the Doctor, who had been leaning against a tree, and indulging in shrugs and an occasional groan, which had not even disconcerted the story teller, “I suppose that is how that very great man, your governor, did the trick. I can see him in every word.”

“That is all you know about it,” laughed the Sculptor. “That is not a bit how the governor did it. That is how I should have done it, had I been the governor, and had the old man’s chances. I call that an ideal thing to happen to a man.”

“Not even founded on fact–which might have been some excuse for telling it,” groaned the Critic. “I’d love to write a review of that story. I’d polish it off.”

“Of course you would,” sneered the Sculptor. “That’s all a critic is for–to polish off the tales he can’t write. I call that a nice romantic, ideal tale for a sculptor to conceive, and as the Doctor said the other night, it is a possible story, since I conceived it, and what the mind of mortal can conceive, can happen.”

“The trouble,” said the Journalist, “with chaps like you, and the Critic, is that your people are all framework. They’re not a bit of flesh and blood.”

“I’d like to know,” said the Sculptor, throwing himself back in his chair, “who has a right to decide that?”

“What I’d like to know,” said the Youngster, “is, what did she do between times? Of course he sculpted, and earned slathers of money. But she–?”

“Oh, ouch–help!” cried the Sculptor. “Do I know?”

“Exactly!” answered the Critic, “and that you don’t sticks out in every line of your story.”

“Goodness me, you might ask the same thing about Leda, or Helen of Troy.”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed the Doctor. “But we know what they did!”

“A lot you do. It is because they are old classics, and you accept them, whereas my story is quite new and original–and you were unprepared for it, and so you can’t appreciate it. Anyway, it’s my first-born story, and I’ll defend it with my life.”

Only a laugh replied to the challenge, and the attitude of defense he struck, as he leaped to his feet, though the Journalist said, under his breath, “It takes a carver in stone to think of a tale like that!”

“But think,” replied the Doctor, “how much trouble some women would escape if they kept on saying A B C like that–for the A B C is usually lovely–and when it was time to X Y Z–often terrible, they just slipped out through the ‘open door.'”

“On the other hand, they risk losing heaps of fun,” said the Journalist.

“What I like about that story,” said the Lawyer, “is that it is so aristocratic. Every one seems to have plenty of money. They all three do just what they like, have no duties but to analyze themselves, and evidently everything goes like clockwork. The husband enjoys being morbid, and has the means to be gloriously so. The sculptor likes to carve Edgar Allan Poe all over the place, and the fair lady is able to gratify the tastes of both men.”

“You can laugh as much as you please,” sighed the Sculptor, “I wish it had happened to me.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, “you have the privilege of going to bed and dreaming that it did.”

“Thank you,” answered the Sculptor. “That is just what I am going to do.”

“What did I tell you last night?” said the Doctor, under his breath, as he watched the Sculptor going slowly toward the house. “Bet he has been telling that tale to himself under many skies for years!”

“I suppose,” laughed the Journalist, “that the only reason he has never built the tomb is that he has never had the money.”

“Oh, be fair!” said the Violinist. “He has not built the tomb because he is not his father. The old man would have done it in a minute, only he lacked imagination. You bet he never day-dreamed, and yet what skill he had, and what adventures! He never saw anything but the facts of life, yet how magnificently he recorded them.”

“It is a pity,” sighed the Violinist, “that the son did not seek a different career.”

“What difference does it make after all?” remarked the Doctor. “One never knows when the next generation will step up or down, and, after all, what does it matter?”

“It is all very well for you to talk,” said the Critic.

“I assure you that the great pageant would have been just as interesting from any other point of view. It has been a great spectacle,–this living. I’m glad I’ve seen it.”

“Amen to that,” said the Divorcee. “I only hope I am going to see it again–even though it hurts.”