was a fetish; in
life, a superfluity. But for the moment he was genuinely moved. The
poseur's mask which he habitually wore slipped aside and the real man
peeped out.

"Yours ought to be more than attempts," he said quietly. "It's in you to
do something really big. And you must do it. If not, you'll go to
pieces. You don't understand yourself."

"And do you profess to?"

"A little." He smiled down at her. "The gods have given you the golden
gift--the creative faculty. And there's a price to pay if you don't use
the gift."

Nan's "blue violet" eyes held a startled look.

"You've got something which isn't given to everyone. To precious few, in
fact! And if you don't use it, it will poison everything. We artists
_may not_ rust. If we do, the soul corrodes."

The sincerity of his tone was unmistakable. Art was the only altar at
which Rooke worshipped, it was probably the only altar at which he ever
would worship consistently. Nan suddenly yielded to the driving force at
the back of his speech.

"Listen to this, then," she said. "It's a setting to some words I came
across the other day."

She handed him a slip of paper on which the words were written and his
eyes ran swiftly down the verses of the brief lyric:

EMPTY HANDS

Away in the sky, high over our heads,
With the width of a world between,
The far Moon sails like a shining ship
Which the Dreamer's eyes have seen.

And empty hands are out-stretched in vain,
While aching eyes beseech,
And hearts may break that cry for the Moon,
The silver Moon out of reach!

But sometimes God on His great white Throne
Looks down from the Heaven above,
And lays in the hands that are empty
The tremulous Star of Love.

Nan played softly, humming the melody in the wistful little pipe of a
voice which was all that Mature had endowed her with. But it had an
appealing quality--the heart-touching quality of the mezzo-soprano--while
through the music ran the same unsatisfied cry as in her setting of the
old Tentmaker's passionate words--a terrible demand for those things that
life sometimes withholds.

As she ceased playing Maryon Rooke spoke musingly.

"It's a queer world," he said. "What a man wants he can't have. He sees
the good gifts and may not take them. Or, if he takes the one he wants
the most--he loses all the rest. Fame and love and life--the great god
Circumstance arranges all these little matters