earth. Then, in the silence, the rustle of the rain seemed a long
murmur of enthusiastic comment.

Abruptly Brantome reappeared in the doorway with his mane disheveled,
like a lion let out of a cage; but Lilla was too wretched to laugh at
him. Now he was bursting with memories of those, since great, with
whom he had chummed in his youth, when he, too, had expected to be
great. He swept his listeners away to foreign studios, where they saw
young men poising for flights amid the stars.

"And here," he affirmed, whirling round to Lilla, "is something better,
in humor, in tragedy, in dignity, in richness of invention, in
everything."

"I know it," she responded, reaching out to lay her hand upon David's
hand.

"Something better," he repeated, in a changed voice, with an effect of
shrinking to his usual proportions. His arm fell to his side, and he
turned away to hide his altered look. "I'll fight for this boy," he
said. "I'll fight the whole world for him."

"You looked," suggested Lilla gently, "as if you were going to fight
me, too."

"You? No, you are my ally. Or, if you please, I am yours; for neither
of us can do anything without you."

At midnight, when Lilla returned to the doorway of his bedroom, David
was not asleep.

She sat down on the edge of the bed. A beam of light from the corridor
touched her slender figure wrapped in yellow silk, and her braided hair
outlined, round her head, by a narrow golden halo. The rain had
ceased, and the breeze from the window was laden with the odor of the
saturated earth. Falteringly he asked her if she was chilly.

She was surprised, having been aware for a long while only of this pity
and this remorse.

"You have suffered to-day," she said.

He responded:

"The penalty one pays for having acquired great riches is the fear of
losing them."

She was silent for a time, then murmured:

"When this piece is finished, or to-morrow if you like, we might go
abroad? Over there we could find any number of nice, secluded places.
Some Greek island might please you? The climate is very invigorating."

"Would you like it?"

"If it would make you happier."

He uttered a groan:

"How I torment you! It must be some devil in me that prompts me to
this ingratitude. All that you've done for me, and I'm not satisfied.
You are perfection."

She laughed dismally, raising her face in the gloom of the bed canopy
that enshrouded them like the shadows of a catafalq