," Ned added sentimentally, "to see 'the
touch of a woman's hand' desecrate the sublime ugliness of the
ancestral home. Think of such a house made 'cozy'!"

But when the news came he would own neither to surprise nor to
disappointment.

"Goodbye, poor Academy!" I exclaimed, tossing over the bridegroom's
eight-page rhapsody to Halidon, who had received its duplicate by the
same post.

"Now, why the deuce do you say that?" he growled. "I never saw such a
beast as you are for imputing mean motives."

To defend myself from this accusation I put out my hand and recovered
Paul's letter.

"Here: listen to this. 'Studying art in Paris when I met her--"the
vision and the faculty divine, but lacking the accomplishment," etc....
A little ethereal profile, like one of Piero della Francesca's angels
... not rich, thank heaven, _but not afraid of money_, and already
enamored of my project for fertilizing my sterile millions...'"

"Well, why the deuce--?" Ned began again, as though I had convicted
myself out of my friend's mouth; and I could only grumble obscurely:
"It's all too pat."

He brushed aside my misgivings. "Thank heaven, she can't paint, any
how. And now that I think of it, Paul's just the kind of chap who ought
to have a dozen children."

"Ah, then indeed: goodbye, poor Academy!" I croaked.

The lady was lovely, of that there could be no doubt; and if Paul now
for a time forgot the Academy, his doing so was but a vindication of
his sex. Halidon had only a glimpse of the returning couple before he
was himself snatched up in one of the chariots of adventure that seemed
perpetually waiting at his door. This time he was going to the far East
in the train of a "special mission," and his head was humming with new
hopes and ardors; but he had time for a last word with me about Ambrose.

"You'll see--you'll see!" he summed up hopefully as we parted; and what
I was to see was, of course, the crowning pinnacle of the Academy
lifting itself against the horizon of the immediate future.

It was in the nature of things that I should, meanwhile, see less than
formerly of the projector of that unrealized structure. Paul had a
personal dread of society, but he wished to show his wife to the world,
and I was not often a spectator on these occasions. Paul indeed, good
fellow, tried to maintain the pretense of an unbroken intercourse, and
to this end I was asked to dine now and then; but when I went I found
guests of a new type,