otten his father's words that day. "Don't crawl,
son,--don't whine. It was your fault this time and you deserved what you
got. Lots of times it won't be your fault, but you'll have to take
your licking anyway. But remember this, son--take your medicine like a
man--always."

Philip groaned; he knew what the general would say when the news of his
son's desertion of his wife and four year old boy reached him. He knew
that he never could explain to his father the absolute torture of the
last four years of enervating domesticity and business mediocrity--the
torture of the Beauty within him crying for expression, half satisfied
by the stolen evenings at the art school but constantly growing stronger
in its all-consuming appeal. No, life to his father was a simple problem
in army ethics--a problem in which duty was "a", one of the known
factors; "x," the unknown, was either "bravery" or "cowardice" when
brought in contact with "a". Having solved this problem, his father
had closed the book; of the higher mathematics, and especially of those
complex problems to which no living man knew the final answer, he had no
conception. And yet----

Philip resumed his reading to avoid the old endless maze of subtleties.

"It is not that I did not--or do not--love you. It is, rather, that
something within me is crying out--something which is stronger than
I, and which I cannot resist. I have waited two years to be sure.
Yesterday, as soon as I reached here, I took my work to the man who is
considered the finest art critic in Paris. He told me that there was a
quality to my painting which he had seen in that of no living artist; he
told me that in five years of hard work I should be able to produce work
which Botticelli would be proud to have done. Do you understand that,
Mary--Botticelli!

"But no, forgive me. My paean of joy comes strangely in a letter which
should be of abject humility for what must seem to you, to father, and
to all, a cowardly, selfish act of desertion--a whining failure to face
life. Oh dear, dear Mary if you could but understand what a hell I have
been through--"

Philip took his pen and crossed out the last line so that no one could
read what had been there.

"Materially, of course, you and little George will be better off; the
foolish pride with which I refused to let your parents help us now
no longer stands in their way. You should have no difficulty about a
divorce.

"You can dispose of my things as you