owly he raised
his head and looked full at Constance Palliser.

"It's too late," he said; "but I wish I had known that you remembered."

"Would you have built it, Jim?"

He looked at her again, then shook his head: "For whom am I to build,
Constance?"

She leaned forward, glancing at the unconscious Hamil, then dropped her
voice: "Build it for the Boy that Was, Jim."

"A headstone would be fitter--and less expensive."

"I am not asking you to build in memory of the dead. The Boy who Was is
only asleep. If you could let him wake, suddenly, in that house--"

A clear flush of surprise stained his skin to the hair. It had been many
years since a woman had hinted at any belief in him.

"Don't you know that I couldn't endure the four walls of a house,
Constance?"

"You have not tried this house."

"Men--such men as I--cannot go back to the House of Youth."

"Try, Jim."

His hand was shaking as he lifted it to adjust his spectacles; and
impulsively she laid her hand on his twitching arm:

"Jim, build it!--and see what happens."

"I cannot."

"Build it. You will not be alone and sad in it if you remember the boy
and the child in the parlour. They--they will be good company--if you
wish."

He rested his elbows on the table, head bent between his sea-burned
hands.

"If I could only, only do something," she whispered. "The boy has merely
been asleep, Jim. I have always known it. But it has taken many years
for me to bring myself to this moment."

"Do you think a man can come back through such wreckage and mire--do you
think he wants to come back? What do you know about it?--with your white
skin and bright hair--and that child's mouth of yours--What do you know
about it?"

"Once you were the oracle, Jim. May I not have my turn?"

"Yes--but what in God's name do you care?"

"Will you build?"

He looked at her dumbly, hopelessly; then his arm twitched and he
relieved the wrist from the weight of his head, sitting upright, his
eyes still bent on her.

"Because--in that old parlour--the child expected it of the boy," she
said. "And expects it yet."

Hamil, who, chair pushed back, had been listlessly watching the
orchestra, roused himself and turned to his aunt and Wayward.

"You want to go, Garry?" said Constance calmly. "I'll walk a little with
James before I compose my aged bones to slumber.... Good night, dear.
Will you come again soon?"

He said he would and took his leave of them in the long cor