into immortality
in everlasting stone. I know that I cannot long hold it here in my
heart. The day will come--perhaps soon--when I shall stand outside
that door, and recognize this as my work, and be proud of it, without
the power to grieve, as I do now; when I shall approve my own
handiwork, and be unable to mourn for her who was sacrificed to
achieve it. What is your pain to mine?"

And I saw the hot tears drop from his eyes. I saw them fall on the
marble floor, and they watered the very spot where his name was so
soon to spring up in pride to confess his handiwork.

I looked on her calm face. I knew she did not regret her part! I rose,
and, without a word, I passed out at the wide door, and, without
looking back, I passed down the slope in the dusk, and left them
together--the woman I had loved, and the friend I had lost!

* * * * *

As his voice died away, he sat upright quickly, threw a glance about
the circle, and, with another fine gesture said: "_Et voila_!"

The Doctor was the only one to really laugh, though a broad grin ran
round the circle.

"Well," remarked the Doctor, who had been leaning against a tree, and
indulging in shrugs and an occasional groan, which had not even
disconcerted the story teller, "I suppose that is how that very great
man, your governor, did the trick. I can see him in every word."

"That is all you know about it," laughed the Sculptor. "That is not a
bit how the governor did it. That is how I should have done it, had I
been the governor, and had the old man's chances. I call that an ideal
thing to happen to a man."

"Not even founded on fact--which might have been some excuse for
telling it," groaned the Critic. "I'd love to write a review of that
story. I'd polish it off."

"Of course you would," sneered the Sculptor. "That's all a critic is
for--to polish off the tales he can't write. I call that a nice
romantic, ideal tale for a sculptor to conceive, and as the Doctor
said the other night, it is a possible story, since I conceived it,
and what the mind of mortal can conceive, can happen."

"The trouble," said the Journalist, "with chaps like you, and the
Critic, is that your people are all framework. They're not a bit of
flesh and blood."

"I'd like to know," said the Sculptor, throwing himself back in his
chair, "who has a right to decide that?"

"What I'd like to know," said the Youngster, "is, what did she do
between times? Of cou