ondering what in his own
organization had denied him the calm happiness of this humble man's
life.

CHAPTER XXXI. AT MASSA

Billy Traynor sat, deeply sunk in study, in the old recess of the palace
library. A passage in the "Antigone" had puzzled him, and the table was
littered with critics and commentators, while manuscript notes, scrawled
in the most rude hand, lay on every side. He did not perceive, in
his intense preoccupation, that Massy had entered and taken the place
directly in front of him. There the youth sat gazing steadfastly at
the patient and studious features before him. It was only when Traynor,
mastering the difficulty that had so long opposed him, broke out into an
enthusiastic declamation of the text that Massy, unable to control the
impulse, laughed aloud.

"How long are you there? I never noticed you comin' in," said Billy,
half-shamed at his detected ardor.

"But a short time; I was wondering at--ay, Billy, and was envying,
too--the concentrated power in which you address yourself to your task.
It is the real secret of all success, and somehow it is a frame of mind
I cannot achieve."

"How is the boy Bacchus goin' on?" asked Billy, eagerly.

"I broke him up yesterday, and it is like a weight off my heart that his
curly bullet head and sensual lips are not waiting for me as I enter the
studio."

"And the Cleopatra?" asked Traynor, still more anxiously.

"Smashed,--destroyed. Shall I own to you, Billy, I see at last myself
what you have so often hinted to me,--I have no genius for the work?"

"I never said,--I never thought so," cried the other; "I only insisted
that nothing was to be done without labor,--hard, unflinching labor;
that easy successes were poor triumphs, and bore no results."

"There,--there, I'll hear that sermon no more. I'd not barter the
freedom of my own unfettered thoughts, as they come and go, in hours of
listless idleness, for all the success you ever promised me. There
are men toil elevates,--me it wearies to depression, and brings no
compensation in the shape of increased power. Mine is an unrewarding
clay,--that's the whole of it. Cultivation only develops the rank weeds
which are deep sown in the soil. I'd like to travel,--to visit some new
land, some scene where all association with the past shall be broken.
What say you?"

"I'm ready, and at your orders," said Traynor, closing his book.

"East or west, then, which shall it be? If sometimes my heart yearn