n to me that Gretchen was
but an episode in a great cosmic philosophy; I knew it once, when I
was young like you. But I am nearly sixty now--worse luck!--and I see
why the cosmic philosophy has been quietly buried and the episode
remains immortal! And so will you some day.

It was a great success for Madame and she basked in it; she had even a
compliment for Roger. In our gay little supper, afterward, we had all
a kind word--an almost pathetically kind word--for Roger. Margarita
herself had never been so attentive to him, so eager for his
ungrudging praise, so openly affectionate with him. He was very kind,
very gentle, but in a quiet way he discouraged her demonstrative
sweetness and led her to talk of her professional future. In her eyes
as she looked at him over her wine-glass I seemed to see something I
had never seen before, a sort of frightened pity; not the terror of a
child cut off by the crowd from its guardian, but rather the fear of
one who sees a one-time comrade on the other side of a widening flood,
and regrets and fears for him and pities his loss and loneliness, but
is driven by Destiny and cannot cross over. I wondered if the others
saw it too, but dared not discover.

It was not altogether a happy _petit souper_, you see; I often think
of it when I assist at similar gatherings, and wonder to myself if in
all the glory and under all the triumph there is not some dark spot
unknown to us flattering guests, some tiny gulf that is growing
relentlessly, though we throw in never so many flowers and jewels to
fill it. The wheel turns ever, and no pleasure of ours but is built on
the shifting sand of some one's pain, even as Alif told me.

We had the _Valentin_ of the opera, a dapper little Frenchman, with us
(I forget his name: he had been very kind to Margarita and stood
between her and the senseless jealousy of the big, handsome tenor more
than once) and I heard him as we left the table remark significantly
to Mme. M----i, with a glance at Roger,

"Monsieur is not artiste, then?"

"Surely that sees itself?" returned the famous teacher with a shrug.

"_Un mari complaisant, alors?_" said the baritone lightly.

Madame had never liked Roger, and was, moreover, a somewhat prejudiced
person, but even her feelings could not prevent the irrepressible
chuckle that greeted this.

"Do not think it, my friend--_jamais de la vie!_" she answered
quickly, with a frank grimace as she caught my eye and guessed that