said Singleton, with a flush of
sympathy across his large white forehead. "You can do it if you try."

"Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,"
Roderick went on. "I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I
mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I
mean to make a magnificent statue of America!"

"America--the Mountains--the Moon!" said Gloriani. "You 'll find it
rather hard, I 'm afraid, to compress such subjects into classic forms."

"Oh, there 's a way," cried Roderick, "and I shall think it out. My
figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous
deal."

"I 'm sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo," said Madame
Grandoni. "Perhaps you don't approve of him."

"Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!" said Roderick, with sublimity. There
was a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done some fine things.

Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small portfolio of
prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick's little statue of
the youth drinking. It pleased him to see his friend sitting there
in radiant ardor, defending idealism against so knowing an apostle of
corruption as Gloriani, and he wished to help the elder artist to be
confuted. He silently handed him the photograph.

"Bless me!" cried Gloriani, "did he do this?"

"Ages ago," said Roderick.

Gloriani looked at the photograph a long time, with evident admiration.

"It 's deucedly pretty," he said at last. "But, my dear young friend,
you can't keep this up."

"I shall do better," said Roderick.

"You will do worse! You will become weak. You will have to take to
violence, to contortions, to romanticism, in self-defense. This sort
of thing is like a man trying to lift himself up by the seat of his
trousers. He may stand on tiptoe, but he can't do more. Here you stand
on tiptoe, very gracefully, I admit; but you can't fly; there 's no use
trying."

"My 'America' shall answer you!" said Roderick, shaking toward him a
tall glass of champagne and drinking it down.

Singleton had taken the photograph and was poring over it with a little
murmur of delight.

"Was this done in America?" he asked.

"In a square white wooden house at Northampton, Massachusetts," Roderick
answered.

"Dear old white wooden houses!" said Miss Blanchard.

"If you could do as well as this there," said Singleton, blushing and
smiling, "one might say that really you had