and I too was grave. Satisfied! Is anyone short of a fool ever
satisfied?

"No! I am not," I admitted, a little bitterly.

"Tell me what you think of these five years, Arnold. Tell me the truth,"
Mabane persisted. "Let me know if your thoughts are the same as mine."

"Drift," I answered. "We have worked a little, and thought a little--but
our feet have been on the earth a great deal oftener than our heads have
touched the clouds."

"Drift," Mabane repeated. "It is a true word. We have gained a little
experience of the wrong sort: we have learnt how to adapt our poor
little gifts to the whim of the moment. Such as our talent has been, we
have made a servant of it to minister to our physical necessities. We
have lived little lives, Arnold--very little lives."

"Go on," I murmured. "This at least is truth!"

Mabane paused. He looked at his pipe, but he did not relight it.

"There is a change coming," he said, slowly. "We are going to drift no
longer. We are going to be drawn into the maelstrom of life. What it may
mean for you and for me and for the boy, I do not know. It will change
us--it must change our work. I shall paint no more guesses at
realism--after someone else; and you will write no more of princesses,
or pull the strings of tinsel-decked puppets, so that they may dance
their way through the pages of your gaily-dressed novels. And an end has
come to these things, Arnold. No, I am not raving, nor is this a jest.
Wait!"

"You speak," I told him, "like a seer. Since when was it given to you to
read the future so glibly, my friend?"

Mabane looked at me with grave eyes. There was no shadow of levity in
his manner.

"I am not a superstitious man, Arnold," he said, "but I come, after all,
of hill-folk, and I believe that there are times when one can feel and
see the shadow of coming things. My grandfather knew the day of his
death, and spoke of it; my father made his will before he set foot on
the steamer which went to the bottom on a calm day between Dover and
Ostend. Nothing of this sort has ever come to me before. You yourself
have called me too hard-headed, too material for an artist. So I have
always thought myself--until to-day. To-day I feel differently."

"Is it this child, then, who is to open the gates of the world to us?" I
asked.

"Remember," Mabane answered, "that before many months have passed she
will be a woman."

I moved in my chair a little uneasily.

"I wonder," I said, half to m