. I felt like saying '_Ave,
Caesar, ave!_' and I watched to see Artemis drop her handkerchief."

"She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up. It would have been a
useful sling for your arm," she added, with thoughtful malice. "It seemed
so real--you all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you keep it up!"
she added, as he cringed when some one knocked against his elbow, hurting
the injured tendons.

Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered. "Oh, I think we'll
likely keep it up for some time," he rejoined, ironically.

"Then the play isn't finished?" she added. "There is another act? Yes, I
thought there was; the programme said four."

"Oh yes, there's another act," he answered, "but it isn't to be played
now; and I'm not in it."

"No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren't in the last act. Who
will be in it?"

Fergus suddenly laughed outright as he looked at Holden expostulating
intently to a crowd of people round him. "Well, honor bright, I don't
think there'll be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle Terry
O'Ryan; and Conny mayn't be in it very long. But he'll be in it for a
while, I guess. You see, the curtain came down in the middle of a
situation, not at the end of it. The curtain has to rise again."

"Perhaps Orion will rise again--you think so?" She laughed in satire; for
Dicky Fergus had made love to her during the last three months with
unsuppressed activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments; which
is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes fire and the other
frost.

"If you want my opinion," he said, in a lower voice, as they moved toward
the door, while people tried to listen to them--"if you want it straight,
I think Orion has risen--right up where shines the evening star--Oh, say,
now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of me? I tell you, it
was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm--would have done it, if I hadn't
gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little Conny Jopp, was as
near Kingdom Come as a man wants at his age. I saw an elephant go _must_
once in India, and it was as like O'Ryan as putty is to dough. It isn't
all over, either, for O'Ryan will forget and forgive, and Jopp won't. He's
your cousin, but he's a sulker. If he has to sit up nights to do it, he'll
try to get back on O'Ryan. He'll sit up nights, but he'll do it, if he
can. And, whatever it is, it won't be pretty."

Outside the door they met Gow J