at
a green nose on a practicing physician tended to impair confidence. Then
Leon Coventry went away, and Boggs discovered (or invented) an important
engagement with a growing family of clothes-moths in a Connecticut
country house. So there remained only the faithful Phil. One swallow
does not make a summer; nor does one youth with a vernal proboscis
convince a skeptical public that it is enjoying the fearful
companionship of a subversive and revolutionary cult. Patronage ebbed
out as fast as it had flooded in. Barbran's eyes were as soft and happy
as ever in the evenings, when she and Phil sat in a less and less
interrupted solitude. But in the mornings palpable fear stalked her.
Phil never saw it. He was preoccupied with a dread of his own.

One evening of howling wind and hammering rain, when all was cosy and
home-like for two in the little firelit Wrightery, she nerved herself up
to facing the facts.

"It's going to be a failure," she said dismally.

"Then you're going away?" he asked, trying to keep his voice from
quaking.

She set her little chin quite firmly. "Not while there's a chance left
of pulling it out."

"Well; it doesn't matter as far as I'm concerned," he muttered. "I'm
going away myself."

"You?" She sat up very straight and startled. "Where?"

"Kansas City."

"Oh! What for?"

"Do you remember a fat old grandpa who was here last month and came back
to ask about the decorations?"

"Yes."

"He's built him a new house--he calls it a mansion--and he wants me to
paint the music-room. He likes"--Phil gulped a little--"my style
of art."

"Isn't that great!" said Barbran in the voice of one giving three cheers
for a funeral. "How does he want his music-room decorated?"

Young Phil put his head in his hands. "Scenes from Moody and Sankey," he
said in a muffled voice.

"Good gracious! You aren't going to do it?"

"I am," retorted the other gloomily. "It's good money." Almost
immediately he added, "Damn the money!"

"No; no; you mustn't do that. You must go, of course. Would--will it
take long?"

"I'm not coming back."

"I don't _want_ you not to come back," said Barbran, in a queer,
frightened voice. She put out her hand to him and hastily withdrew it.

He said desperately: "What's the use? I can't sit here forever looking
at you and--and dreaming of--of impossible things, and eating my heart
out with my nose painted green."

"The poor nose!" murmured Barbran.

With one of her home-