tion. "He stole it," she cried, rousing
vehemently from her inertia--"mine--mine. He stole my story."

But common sense prevailed in the end. No, there was no possible chance
for theft. She had not spoken of "Patroclus" to any one but Trevor. Her
manuscript draft had not once left her hands. No; it was a coincidence,
nothing more--one of those fateful coincidences with which the
scientific and literary worlds are crowded. And he, this unknown
Vickers, this haphazard genius of Ash Fork, Arizona, had the prior
claim. Her "Patroclus" must remain unwritten. The sob caught and
clutched at her throat at last.

"Oh," she cried in a half-whisper--"oh, my chance, my hopes, my foolish
little hopes! And now _this_! To have it all come to nothing--when I was
so proud, so buoyant--and Mr. Trevor and all! Oh, could anything be more
cruel!"

And then, of all moments, _ex machina_, Harold Vickers's card was handed
in.

She stared at it an instant, through tears, amazed and incredulous.
Surely some one was playing a monstrous joke upon her today. Soon she
would come upon the strings and false bottoms and wigs and masks of the
game. But the office boy's contemplation of her distress was real.
Something must be done. The whole machine of things could not
indefinitely hang thus suspended, inert, waiting her pleasure.

"Yes," she exclaimed all at once. "Very well; show him in;" and she had
no more than gathered up the manuscript of "The Last Dryad" from the
floor when its author entered the room.

He was very young,--certainly not more than twenty-three,--tall, rather
poorly dressed, an invalid, beyond doubt, and the cough and the flush on
the high cheek-bone spelled the name of the disease. The pepper-and-salt
suit, the shoe-string cravat, and the broad felt hat were frankly
Arizona. And he was diffident, constrained, sitting uncomfortably on the
chair as a mark of respect, smiling continually, and, as he talked,
throwing in her name at almost every phrase:

"No, Miss. Beltis; yes, Miss. Beltis; quite right, Miss. Beltis."

His embarrassment helped her to her own composure, and by the time she
came to question him as to his book and the reasons that brought him
from Ash Fork to New York, she had herself in hand.

"I have received an unimportant government appointment in the Fisheries
Department," he explained, "and as I was in New York for the week I
thought I might--not that I wished to seem to hurry you, Miss.
Beltis--but I th