gone, and he will not come back."

"Say! I'll bet a dollar it was you who shoo'd him off."

"Yes. But it was undoubtedly an impertinence on my part, and I'd rather
you would not disclose my officiousness to Miss Harrigan."

"Piffle! If you knew him you had a perfect right to pass him back his
ticket. Who was he?"

Courtlandt poked at the gravel with his cane.

"One of the big guns?"

Courtlandt nodded.

"So big that he couldn't have married my girl even if he loved her?"

"Yes. As big as that."

Harrigan riffled the leaves of his book. "What do you say to going down to
the hotel and having a game of _bazzica_, as they call billiards here?"

"Nothing would please me better," said Courtlandt, relieved that Harrigan
did not press him for further revelations.

"Nora is studying a new opera, and Molly-O is ragging the village
dressmaker. It's only half after ten, and we can whack 'em around until
noon. I warn you, I'm something of a shark."

"I'll lay you the cigars that I beat you."

"You're on!"

Harrigan put the book in his pocket, and the two of them made for the
upper path, not, however, without waving a friendly adieu to Celeste, who
was watching them with much curiosity.

For a moment Nora became visible in the window. Her expression did not
signify that the sight of the men together pleased her. On the contrary,
her eyes burned and her brow was ruffled by several wrinkles which
threatened to become permanent if the condition of affairs continued to
remain as it was. To her the calm placidity of the man was nothing less
than monumental impudence. How she hated him; how bitterly, how intensely
she hated him! She withdrew from the window without having been seen.

"Did you ever see two finer specimens of man?" Celeste asked of Abbott.

"What? Who?" mumbled Abbott, whose forehead was puckered with impatience.
"Oh, those two? They _are_ well set up. But what the deuce _is_ the matter
with this foreground?" taking the brushes from his teeth. "I've been
hammering away at it for a week, and it does not get there yet."

Celeste rose and laid aside her work. She stood behind him and studied the
picture through half-closed critical eyes. "You have painted it over too
many times." Then she looked down at the shapely head. Ah, the longing to
put her hands upon it, to run her fingers through the tousled hair, to
touch it with her lips! But no! "Perhaps you are tired; perhaps you have
worked too hard. Why not p