re,' he concluded gravely, 'it is as I
tell you. I have eaten all.'

And in fact, while talking, he had punctuated each sentence with a
tiny slice or two of thin bread and butter, and everybody laughed,
except Schreiermeyer, as the huge singer gravely held up the empty
glass dish and showed it.

'What do you expect of me?' he asked. 'It is a vice, and I am not
Saint Anthony, to resist temptation.'

'Perhaps,' suggested Fraeulein Ottilie timidly, 'if you exercised a
little strength of character--'

'Exercise?' roared Stromboli, not understanding her, for they spoke
a jargon of Italian, German, and English. 'Exercise? The more I
exercise, the more I eat! Ha, ha, ha! Exercise, indeed! You talk like
crazy!'

'You will end on wheels,' said Schreiermeyer with cold contempt. 'You
will stand on a little truck which will be moved about the stage from
below. You will be lifted to Juliet's balcony by a hydraulic crane.
But you shall pay for the machinery. Oh yes, oh yes! I will have it
in the contract! You shall be weighed. So much flesh to move, so much
money.'

'Shylock!' suggested Logotheti, glancing at the statuette and
laughing.

'Yes, Shylock and his five hundred pounds of flesh,' answered
Schreiermeyer, with a faint smile that disappeared again at once.

'But I meant character--' began Fraeulein Ottilie, trying to go back
and get in a word.

'Character!' cried the Baci-Roventi with a deep note that made the
open piano vibrate. 'His stomach is his heart, and his character is
his appetite!'

She bent her heavy brows and fixed her gleaming black eyes on him with
a tragic expression.

'"Let them cant about decorum who have characters to lose,"' quoted
Logotheti softly.

This delicate banter went on for twenty minutes, very much to
Schreiermeyer's inward satisfaction, for it proved that at least four
members of his company were on good terms with him and with each
other; for when they had a grudge against him, real or imaginary, they
became sullen and silent in his presence, and eyed him with the coldly
ferocious expression of china dogs.

At last they all rose and went away in a body, leaving Margaret with
Logotheti.

'I had quite forgotten that it was my birthday,' she said, when they
were gone.

'I've brought you a little seal,' he answered, holding out the
intaglio.

She took it and looked at it.

'How pretty!' she exclaimed. 'It's awfully kind of you to have
remembered to-day, and I wanted a seal