as only echoed my words," Sally objected.

"Not at all. You said it was harder to work from a pattern; I merely
suggested that the results were more satisfactory."

"Well, never mind," Sally returned promptly. "I don't care about that,
so long as the vote goes against Bobby."

"And then, this matter of studying," Bobby went on, disdaining her
interruption. "Now, when you get hard up for ideas, Arlt, when you
actually can't get enough out of your gray matter to fill up your
pattern, you go off somewhere and study something. Now, if I--"

"What have you to do with it, Bobby?" Miss Gannion queried.

"I represent literature, of course, just as Arlt represents music. If I
were to go off and study something, what would you all think?"

"That it was the best possible thing you could possibly do," Sally
retorted.

Bobby frowned.

"You are so feminine and subjective, Sally. I suppose you can't help it,
though. But really--Arlt, for instance, has produced a prize
composition, while he is still studying. That's exactly what we used to
do in prep. school. Fancy a school for novelists, with night classes for
indigent poets! It would be a parallel case; but what would be the
effect upon literature?"

Arlt rose deliberately and crossed the room to the empty chair at Miss
Gannion's side.

"All in all," he answered quietly; "from my slight knowledge of the
teeming millions who are standing in line before the portals of American
literature, I think the establishment of such a school ought to be the
first duty of a self-respecting American government."

Thayer, meanwhile, was preparing for a longer absence from America than
even Arlt was aware. The late winter and early spring had been for him a
season of perfect professional success. _Faust_ had been the first of
many operas, for the illness of the regular baritone had taken a sudden
turn for the worse and had ended his work for the season, and the
manager had insisted that Thayer should fill his place. The event had
fully justified the prediction of the old _maestro_, and in his operatic
roles Thayer was finding out where his real greatness lay. His mental
personality, as well as his huge figure, demanded room to manifest
itself. His acting was dramatic, yet full of control and reserve power,
and his voice, fresh from its weeks of rest, richer and stronger than
ever, was endowed with a new note of pathos, of longing for something
quite beyond his power of attainment. Measur