e
unselfish life has at last taught me and shamed me, that I give you up
forever.

"Dear, perhaps you had better not answer this for a long, long time.
Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars--and when
not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in
sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his
easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a
sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest girl
in all the world.

"_Halcyonii dies! Fortem posce animum! Forsan et haec olim meminisse
juvabit. Vale!_

"LOUIS NEVILLE."

CHAPTER XVII

The fifteenth day of her absence had come and gone and there had been no
word from her.

Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had
been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio
all day long, scarcely knowing what he was about, insensible to fatigue
or to anything except the dull, ceaseless beating of his heart. He
seemed older, thinner:--a man whose sands were running very swiftly.

With the dawn of the fifteenth day of her absence a gray pallor had come
into his face; and it remained there. Ogilvy and Annan sauntered into
the studio to visit him, twice, and the second time they arrived bearing
gifts--favourite tonics, prescriptions, and pills.

"You look like hell, Kelly," observed Sam with tactful and
characteristic frankness. "Try a few of this assorted dope. Harry and I
dote on dope:

_"'After the bat is over,
After the last cent's spent,
And the pigs have gone from the clover
And the very last gent has went;
After the cards are scattered,
After I've paid the bill,
Weary and rocky and battered
I swallow my liver pill!_'"

--he sang, waltzing slowly around the room with Annan until,
inadvertently, they stepped upon the tail of Gladys who went off like a
pack of wet fire-crackers; whereupon they retired in confusion to their
respective abodes above.

Evening came, and with evening, letters; but none from her. And slowly
the stealthy twilight hours dragged their heavy minutes toward darkness;
and night crawled into the room like some sinister living thing, and
found him still pacing the floor.

Through the dusky June silence far below in the street sounded the
clatter of wheels; but they never stopped before his abode. Voices rose
faintly at moments in the still