the
truth about itself or about anything in the universe. The prophets have
always lived in a garret, my dear fellow--only the ravens don't always
find out their address! Speaking of ravens, though, Kate told me she
saw old Shepson coming out of your place--I say, old man, you're not
meditating an apostasy? You're not doing the kind of thing that Shepson
would look at?"

Stanwell laughed. "Oh, he looked at them--but only to confirm his
reasons for rejecting them."

"Ha! ha! That's right--he wanted to refresh his memory with their
badness. But how on earth did he happen to have any doubts on the
subject? I should as soon have thought of his coming in here!"

Stanwell winced at the analogy, but replied in Caspar's key: "Oh, he's
not as sure of any of us as he is of you!"

The sculptor received this tribute with a joyous expletive. "By God,
no, he's sure of me, as you say! He and his tribe know that I'll starve
in my tracks sooner than make a concession--a single concession. A
fellow came after me once to do an angel on a tombstone--an angel
leaning against a broken column, and looking as if it was waiting for
the elevator and wondering why in hell it didn't come. He said he
wanted me to show that the deceased was pining to get to heaven. As she
was his wife I didn't dispute the proposition, but when I asked him
what he understood by _heaven_ he grabbed his hat and walked out of the
studio. _He_ didn't wait for the elevator."

Stanwell listened with a practised smile. The story of the man who had
come to order the angel was so familiar to Arran's friends that its
only interest consisted in waiting to see what variation he would give
to the retort which had put the mourner to flight. It was generally
supposed that this visit represented the sculptor's nearest approach to
an order, and one of his fellow-craftsmen had been heard to remark that
if Caspar _had_ made the tombstone, the lady under it would have tried
harder than ever to get to heaven. To Stanwell's present mood, however,
there was something more than usually irritating in the gratuitous
assumption that Arran had only to derogate from his altitude to have a
press of purchasers at his door.

"Well--what did you gain by kicking your widower out?" he objected.
"Why can't a man do two kinds of work--one to please himself and the
other to boil the pot?"

Caspar stopped in his jerky walk--the stride of a tall man attempted
with short legs (it sometimes appeared