and put my
hand on his shoulder. 'Henry, dear old chap, I never thought you felt
like this about things.' Certainly he was writing a play, but as he
had been engaged on it now for over ten years (Henry is a conscientious
writer), my interest in it was not so keen as it had been when he first
told me of the idea a decade previously.

'Couldn't you do a little of your play every evening after dinner?' I
suggested.

'I'm too brain weary by that time--my ideas seem to have given out.
Sometimes I think I must renounce the notion of going on with it--and
it's been one of my greatest ambitions.'

I smoothed his hair tenderly, noticing how heavily flecked it was with
grey and how it silvered at the temples. Poor Henry, he reminded me
just then of _L'homme a la cervelle d'or_, a fantastic story of
Daudet's, where he tells of a man possessed of a brain of gold which he
tore out, atom by atom, to buy gifts for the woman he loved until, in
the end (she being an extravagant type), he was left without a scrap of
brain to call his own and so expired. The man was, of course, supposed
to be a writer, and the brain of gold his ideas. It made me feel quite
uneasy to think that Henry, too, might be, metaphorically speaking,
steadily divesting himself of brain day by day in order to support The
Kid and me in comfort.

'I ought not to grumble,' he said at last. 'Very few people can do
what they want to in this world. Take you, my dear, for instance. You
are not following your natural bent when you write those articles for
the Woman's Page.'

'I should hope not--I loathe 'em,' I said viciously.

'There's one thing about it,' he went on musingly, 'we'll see that The
Kid has every chance when she grows up.'

We are looking forward very much to the time when The Kid will be grown
up. Henry says he pictures her moving silently about the house, tall,
graceful, helpful, smoothing his brow when he is wearied, keeping his
papers in order, correcting his proofs and doing all his typing for
him. I, too, for my part, have visions of her taking all household
cares off my shoulders, mending, cooking, making my blouses and her own
clothes, and playing Beethoven to us in the evenings when our work is
done. In her spare time we anticipate that she will write books and
plays that will make her famous.

We have visions of these things, I repeat--generally when The Kid is in
bed asleep with her hands folded on her breast in a devotional
at