see
your fault--that's the main thing. What's done can't be undone."

"No, thank heaven!" thought the boy, feeling almost great.

How delicious is the irrevocable past--sometimes!

"Be more careful in future. Don't let your boyish desire for follies
carry you away."

"I shall," was his son's mental rejoinder.

"And I dare say you'll do good work in the world yet."

The train ran into Paddington Station on this sublime climax of
fatherhood, and the further words of wisdom were jerked out of Mr. Lane
during their passage to Carlton House Terrace in a four-wheeled cab.

*****

"What an extraordinary person Mr. Eustace Lane is!" said Winifred Ames
to her particular friend and happy foil, Jane Fraser. "All London is
beginning to talk about him. I suppose he must be clever?"

"Oh, of course, darling, very clever; otherwise, how could he possibly
gain so much notice? Just think--why, there are millions of people in
London, and I'm sure only about a thousand of them, at most, attract any
real attention. I think Mr. Eustace Lane is a genius."

"Do you really, Jenny?"

"I do indeed."

Winifred mused for a moment. Then she said:

"It must be very interesting to marry a genius, I suppose?"

"Oh, enthralling, simply. And, then, so few people can do it."

"Yes."

"And it must be grand to do what hardly anybody can do."

"In the way of marrying, Jenny?"

"In any way," responded Miss Fraser, who was an enthusiast, and
habitually sentimental. "What would I give to do even one unique thing,
or to marry even one unique person!"

"You couldn't marry two at the same time--in England."

"England limits itself so terribly; but there is a broader time coming.
Those who see it, and act upon what they see, are pioneers; Mr. Lane is
a pioneer."

"But don't you think him rather extravagant?"

"Oh yes. That is so splendid. I love the extravagance of genius, the
barbaric lavishness of moral and intellectual supremacy."

"I wonder whether the supremacy of Eustace Lane is moral, or
intellectual, or--neither?" said Winifred. "There are so many different
supremacies, aren't there? I suppose a man might be supreme merely as
a--as a--well, an absurdity, you know."

Jenny smiled the watery smile of the sentimentalist; a glass of still
lemonade washed with limelight might resemble it.

"Eustace Lane likes you, Winnie," she remarked.

"I know; that is why I am wondering about him. One does wonder, you see,
about the man one