She consulted the name and address
given--Harold Vickers, Ash Fork, Arizona. There was something in that
Harold; perhaps education and good people. But the Vickers told her
nothing. And where was Ash Fork, Arizona; and why and how had "The Last
Dryad" been written there, of all places the green world round? How came
the inspiration for that classic _paysage_, such as Ingres would have
loved, from the sage-brush, and cactus? "Well," she told herself, "Moore
wrote 'Lalla Rookh' in a back room in London, among the chimney-pots and
soot. Maybe the proportion is inverse. But, Mr. Harold Vickers of Ash
Fork, Arizona, your little book is, to say the least, well worth its
ink."

She went through the other manuscripts as quickly as was consistent with
fairness, and declined them all. Then settling herself comfortably in
her chair, she plunged, with the delight of an explorer venturing upon
new ground, into the pages of "The Last Dryad."

* * * * *

Four hours later she came, as it were, to herself, to find that she sat
lax in her place, with open, upturned palms, and eyes vacantly fixed
upon the opposite wall. "The Last Dryad," read to the final word, was
tumbled in a heap upon the floor. It was past her luncheon hour. Her
cheeks flamed; her hands were cold and moist; and her heart beat thick
and slow, clogged, as it were, by its own heaviness.

But the lapse of time was naught to her, nor the fever that throbbed in
her head. Her world, like a temple of glass, had come down dashing about
her. The future, which had beckoned her onward,--a fairy in the path
wherein her feet were set,--was gone, and at the goal of her ambition
and striving she saw suddenly a stranger stand, plucking down the golden
apples that she so long and passionately had desired.

For "The Last Dryad" was her own, her very, very own and cherished
"Patroclus."

That the other author had taken the story from a different view-point,
that his treatment varied, that the approach was his own, that the
wording was his own, produced not the least change upon the final
result. The idea, the motif, was identical in each; identical in every
particular, identical in effect, in suggestion. The two tales were one.
That was the fact, the unshakable fact, the block of granite that a
malicious fortune had flung athwart her little pavilion of glass.

At first she jumped to the conclusion of chicanery. At first there
seemed no other explana