to the
hammock, ten minutes later, the cloud was gone from her face, and she
never mentioned the subject again. And you may be sure that the
literature teacher never did. She always looked upon the incident as
her worst moment of tactlessness.

* * * * *

"Bully, bully!" exclaimed the Lawyer, "Take off your laurels, Critic,
and crown the Doctor!"

"For that little tale," shouted the Critic. "Never! That has not a bit
of literary merit. It has not one rounded period."

"The Lawyer is a realist," said the Sculptor. "Of course that appeals
to him."

"If you want my opinion, I consider that there is just as much
imagination in that story as in the morbid rigmarole you threw at us
last night," persisted the Lawyer.

"Why," declared the Critic, "I call mine a healthy story compared with
this one. It is a shocking tale for the operating room--I mean the
insane asylum."

"All right," laughed the Doctor, "then we had all better go inside the
sanitarium walls at once."

"Do you presume," said the Journalist, "to pretend that this is a
normal incident?"

"I am not going into that. I only claim that more people know the
condition than dare to confess it. It is after all only symbolic of
the duality of the soul--or call it what you like. It is the
embodiment of a truth which no one thinks of denying--that the spirit
has its secrets. Imagination plays a great part in most of our
lives--it is the glory that gilds our facts--it is the brilliant
barrier which separates us from the beasts, and the only real thing
that divides us into classes, though, of course, it does not run
through the world like straight lines of latitude and longitude, but
like the lines of mean temperature."

"The truth is," said the Lawyer, "if the Principal Girl had been
obliged to struggle for her living, the fact that her imagination did
not run at any point into her world of realities would not have been
dangerous."

"Naturally not," said the Doctor, "for she would have been a great
novelist, or a poor one, and all would have been well, or not,
according to circumstances."

"All the same," persisted the Critic, "I think it a horrid story
and--"

"I think," interrupted the Doctor, "that you have a vicious mind,
and--" Here the Doctor cast a quick look in the direction of the
Youngster, who was stretched out in a steamer chair and had not said a
word.

"All right," said the Trained Nurse, "he is fast asleep."