fessed his own blunder about the flowers.

Hoskins whistled. "I tell you what," he said, after a long pause, "there
are some things in history that I never could realize,--like Mary, Queen
of Scots, for instance, putting on her best things, and stepping down
into the front parlor of that castle to have her head off. But a thing
like this, happening on your own balcony, _helps_ you to realize it."

"It helps you to realize it," assented Elmore, deeply oppressed by the
tragic parallel.

"He's just beginning to feel it about now," said Hoskins, with strange
_sang froid_. "I reckon it's a good deal like being shot. I didn't fully
appreciate my little hit under a couple of days. Then I began to find
out that something had happened. Look here," he added, "I want to show
you something;" and he pulled the wet cloth off a breadth of clay which
he had set up on a board stayed against the wall. It was a bas-relief
representing a female figure advancing from the left corner over a
stretch of prairie towards a bulk of forest on the right; bison, bear,
and antelope fled before her; a lifted hand shielded her eyes; a star
lit the fillet that bound her hair.

"That's the best thing you've done, Hoskins," said Elmore. "What do you
call it?"

"Well, I haven't settled yet. I _have_ thought of 'Westward the Star of
Empire,' but that's rather long; and I've thought of 'American
Enterprise.' I ain't in any hurry to name it. You like it, do you?"

"I like it immensely!" cried Elmore. "You must let me bring the ladies
to see it."

"Well, not just yet," said the sculptor, in some confusion. "I want to
get it a little further along first."

They stood looking together at the figure; and when Elmore went away he
puzzled himself about something in it,--he could not tell exactly what.
He thought he had seen that face and figure before, but this is what
often occurs to the connoisseur of modern sculpture. His mind heavily
reverted to Lily and her suitors. Take her in one way, especially in her
subordination to himself, the girl was as simply a child as any in the
world,--good-hearted, tender, and sweet, and, as he could see, without
tendency to flirtation. Take her in another way, confront her with a
young and marriageable man, and Elmore greatly feared that she
unconsciously set all her beauty and grace at work to charm him; another
life seemed to inform her, and irradiate from her, apart from which she
existed simple and childlike still.