ing of the door-bell, ran lightly to the
door and listened as the servant greeted Mr. Brassfield, and then
hurried back to her seat by the grate, and became so absorbed in her
book that she was oblivious of his being shown into the room, until the
maid had retired, leaving him standing at gaze, his brow beaded with
sweat, his face pale and his hands unsteady. The early Christian had
entered on his martyrdom.

XI

THE FIRST BATTLE, AND DEFEAT

From Camelot to Cameliard
The way by bright pavilions starred,
In arms and armor all unmarred,
To Guinevere rode Lancelot to claim for Arthur
his reward.

Down from her window look't the maid
To see her bridegroom, half afraid--
In him saw kingliness arrayed:
And summoned by the herald Love to yield, her woman's
heart obeyed.

From Cameliard to Camelot
Rode Guinevere and Lancelot--
Ye bright pavilions, babble not!
The king she took, she keeps for king, in spite of
shame, in spite of blot!
--_From Cameliard to Camelot_.

It is a disagreeable duty (one, however, which you and I, madam,
discharge with a conscientiousness which the unthinking are sometimes
unable to distinguish from zeal) to criticize one's friends. The task
is doubly hard when the animadversion is committed to paper, with a
more or less definite idea of ultimate publication. I trust, beloved,
that we may call Mr. Florian Amidon a friend. He is an honest fellow
as the world goes, in spite of the testimony of Simeon Woolaver
regarding the steers; and he wishes to do the right thing. In a matter
of business, now, or on any question of films, plates or lenses, we
should find him full of decision, just and prompt in action. But (and
the disagreeable duty of censure comes in here) there he stands like a
Stoughton-bottle in a most abject state of woe, because, forsooth, he
possesses the love of that budding Juno over there by the grate, and
knows not what to do with it! What if he _doesn't_ feel as if he had
the slightest personal acquaintance with her? What if the image of
another, and the thought----? But look with me, for a moment, at the
situation.

There she sits, so attentive to her book (is it the _Rubaiyat_? Yes!)
that his entrance has not attracted her notice--not at all! One
shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy
silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender
ankle, and a glimps