ouse. "You must let me come
and see what wonderful things you are doing."

"I am doing nothing wonderful," he said slowly. "It has taken me all
this time to realize I was never a sculptor; I have been so atrociously
idle, Mary."

"But you need rest, my dear Tony."

"I shall not need any rest until I am an old man."

He caressed the hand that lay on his arm. They walked past the
flower-beds, and she picked the dead roses, cutting the withered leaves,
and talking to him gaily, telling him all she had done during the days
of their separation, and suddenly he said--

"You do not seem to have missed me."

"Everywhere," she answered, pressing his arm.

They walked together slowly to the house, where she left her roses in
the hall and took him into the music-room, where they had been last
when he left her, the afternoon following the luncheon.

"I must impress her indelibly on my mind," Antony thought. "I may never
see her again."

When she had seated herself by the window through which he could see the
roses on the high rose trees and the iron balcony on whose other side
was the rumble of Paris, he stood before her gravely.

"Come and sit beside me," she invited, slowly. "You seem suddenly like a
stranger."

"Mary," he said simply, "the time has come for me to ask you----" The
words stuck in his throat. What in God's name was he going to ask her?
What a fanatic he was! Utterly unconscious of his thoughts, she
interrupted him.

"I know what you want to ask me, Tony, and I have been waiting." She
leaned against him. "You see, I have had the foolish feeling that
perhaps you didn't care as you thought you did. It is that dreadful
difference in our age."

"Do you care, Mary?"

She might have answered him, "Why otherwise should I marry a penniless
man, five years my junior, when the world is before me?"

She said, "Yes, I care deeply."

"Ah," he breathed, "then it is all right, Mary; that is all we need."
After a few seconds he said gently: "Now look at me." Her face was
flushed and her eyes humid. She raised them to him. He was holding one
of her hands in both of his as he spoke, and from time to time touched
it with his lips. "Listen to me; try to understand. I am a Bohemian, an
artist; say that over and over. Do you think me crazy? I have not been
ill. I went into a retreat. I shut myself up with my soul. This life
here,"--he gestured to the room as though it held a host of
enemies,--"this life here has cru