fully at his
friends.

"What is it now?" asked Rives, impatiently. "Have you forgotten
something?"

Stuart looked back at the front door in momentary indecision.

"Y-es," he answered. "I did forget something. But it doesn't matter," he
added, cheerfully, taking Sloane's arm.

"Come on," he said, "and so Seldon made a hit, did he? I am glad--and
tell me, old man, how long will we have to wait at Gib for the P. & O.?"

Stuart's servant had heard the men trooping down the stairs, laughing
and calling to one another as they went, and judging from this that they
had departed for the night, he put out all the lights in the library and
closed the piano, and lifted the windows to clear the room of the
tobacco-smoke. He did not notice the beautiful photograph sitting
upright in the armchair before the fireplace, and so left it alone in
the deserted library.

The cold night-air swept in through the open window and chilled the
silent room, and the dead coals in the grate dropped one by one into
the fender with a dismal echoing clatter; but the Picture still sat in
the armchair with the same graceful pose and the same lovely expression,
and smiled sweetly at the encircling darkness.

THE EDITOR'S STORY

It was a warm afternoon in the early spring, and the air in the office
was close and heavy. The letters of the morning had been answered and
the proofs corrected, and the gentlemen who had come with ideas worth
one column at space rates, and which they thought worth three, had
compromised with the editor on a basis of two, and departed. The
editor's desk was covered with manuscripts in a heap, a heap that never
seemed to grow less, and each manuscript bore a character of its own, as
marked or as unobtrusive as the character of the man or of the woman who
had written it, which disclosed itself in the care with which some were
presented for consideration, in the vain little ribbons of others, or
the selfish manner in which still others were tightly rolled or vilely
scribbled.

The editor held the first page of a poem in his hand, and was reading it
mechanically, for its length had already declared against it, unless it
might chance to be the precious gem out of a thousand, which must be
chosen in spite of its twenty stanzas. But as the editor read, his
interest awakened, and he scanned the verses again, as one would turn to
look a second time at a face which seemed familiar. At the fourth stanza
his memory was stil