l years
The gods bring many gifts, and mine shall be--
Immortal life in mortal agony--
Vain longing, fanned by winged hopes and fears
To inextinguishable flame--and tears
Bitter as death, salt as the Lesbian Sea."

Her breast rose and fell with the lines; by this time she was educated
up to their feeling.

"Who was Sappho, and what did she do?--I know, but I've forgotten,"
asked a voice in the crowd.

"Oh, the woman who threw herself at the other fellow's head, you know,
who naturally didn't appreciate the compliment."

Audrey was not intelligent enough to refrain from the inward comment,
"How singularly inappropriate! I should have said Katherine was about
the last person in the world to----" She turned round and found herself
face to face with the poet. Knowles had been wandering through the crowd
with evasive eyes, successfully dodging the ladies of his acquaintance,
while his air of abstraction took all quality of offence from the
unerring precision of his movements. But when he saw Miss Craven he
stopped. He had an inkling of the truth, and respected her feelings too
much to slight her while Wyndham's marriage was still a topic of the
hour.

"Not bad for the boy, that!" said he, smiling gently at Sappho. "He's
coming out, isn't he?"

"So are you, I think--in a new line too!"

"Ah--er--not quite a new one. I've been taken that way before."

She was about to make some pretty speech when they were joined by Ted,
who had not noticed Audrey. His forehead puckered slightly when he saw
her, but that was no doubt from sympathy with her probable
embarrassment. For the first time in their acquaintance he was
indifferent to the touch of the small hand that had tried to mould his
destiny. If the truth must be told, in the flush of his success Ted had
found out that his passion for Audrey was only the flickering of the
flame on the altar dedicated to eternal Art. He listened to her
compliments without that sense of apotheosis which (however low he rated
it) her criticism had been wont to produce.

"Don't let's be seen looking at it any longer," he said at last; "let's
go and pretend to get excited about some other fellow's work."

So they left Audrey to herself. She turned back and went down the room
to see "The Witch of Atlas," the lady robed in her "subtle veil" of
starbeams and mist. Her view of this picture was somewhat obstructed by
a stout gentleman who, together with a thin lady, w