?" She lifted
her eyebrows in astonishment.

"You know, Pobloff, I have warned you about your tendency to apoplexy.
You bother your brain, such as it is, too much with figures. Stick to
your last, Mr. Shoemaker, and don't eat so much. When you fell off the
stage this morning I was sure you were killed, and we were all very much
alarmed. But after the hornist told us you would be all right in a few
hours, we--" "Whom do you mean by _we_, Luga?" "The men, of course."
"And you saw me faint?" "Certainly, Pobloff."

"Where did you go, wife?" "Go? Nowhere. We remained here. Besides, the
doors were locked, and the men couldn't get away." "And you saw nothing
strange, did not notice that you were out of my sight, out of the
town's sight, for over thirty hours?" "Pobloff," she vixenishly
declared, "you've been at the vodka."

"And so there is no true perception of time in the fourth dimension of
space," he sadly reflected. His brows became dark with jealousy: "What
did you do all the time?" That accursed horn-player in her company for
over a day!

"Do?" "Yes," he repeated, "do? Were there no wonderful sights? Didn't
you catch a glimpse, as through an open door, of rare planetary vistas,
of a remoter plane of existence? Were there no grandiose and untrodden
stars? O Luga, tell me!--you are a woman of imagination--what did you
see, hear, feel in that many-colored land, out of time, out of space?"

"See?" she echoed irritably, for she was annoyed by her husband's poetic
foolery, "what could I see in this hall? When the men weren't grumbling
at having nothing to drink, they were playing _pinochle_."

"They played cards in the fourth dimension of space!" Pobloff boomed out
reproachfully, sorrowfully. Then he went meekly to his home with Luga,
the harpist.

MUSIC THE CONQUEROR

The hot hush of noon was stirred into uneasy billows by the shuffling of
sandals over marble porches; all Rome sped to the spectacle in the
circus. A brave day, the wind perfumed, a hard blue sky, the dark
shadows cool and caressing and in the breeze a thousand-colored canopies
fainted and fluttered. The hearts of the people on the benches were gay,
for Diocletian, their master, had baited the trap with Christians;
living, palpitating human flesh was to be sacrificed and the gossips
spoke in clear, crisp sentences as they enumerated the deadly list,
dwelling upon certain names with significant emphasis. This multitude
followed with languid int