This Monday afternoon was the first time he had seen Beatrix since early
September. He had left the others at Monomoy and, in company with Arlt,
had gone back to the city to put himself in training for some autumn
festivals at which he had been engaged to sing. By the time Beatrix was
back in town once more, he had started upon what was destined to be a
triumphal progress through New England. To some men, the mere
professional success would have been enough in itself; but Thayer was of
too large calibre to find a steady diet of applause and adjectives, both
in the superlative degree of comparison, either a satisfactory or a
stimulating meal. Often and often, as he bowed across the footlights
preparatory to shouldering and lugging off his ponderous wreath of
laurels, he would have given all the evening's triumph for the sake of
one quiet hour upon the Monomoy beach.

The evening before had been the climax of his empty successes. It had
been Boston's first oratorio of the season, and the wreath had been an
unusually ponderous one. It had met him promptly at the end of his first
number, and it had impressed him as a curious bit of irony, following as
it did upon the closing phrases of _Spe modo Vivitur_. Were his crowns
to be only the thornless, characterless ones that went with his
profession? He bowed low, nevertheless, before the storm of applause,
set up his trophy against the steadiest of the music racks of the second
violins, and lost himself so completely in wondering how Lorimer was
holding out without him that he went through his part in the quartette,
three numbers later, in perfect unconsciousness of the hostile glances
which the soprano had been casting at him during the _Est tibi Laurea_.
Her flowers had been carnations, and only two dozen of them, at that.

The next afternoon, Thayer found himself in the familiar room, with
Beatrix's hand in his own.

"Only ten weeks, measured by time," he answered her greeting; "but it
seems half a decade since we were killing time on the beach at Monomoy."

"Killing crabs, you would better say," she returned, with a smile. "I
think you and Sidney must have exterminated the race for all time."

"Can you destroy the future for a race that habitually goes backwards?"
he questioned, with a boyish gayety which she had never seen in him
before. "How is Lorimer?"

No one else but Thayer would have noted the slight hesitation that
punctuated her reply.

"He is--well."

Th