have been some god
pacing cloud-riven Olympus in the twilight. By and by he laughed; and
the atmosphere--mental--cleared. Maeterlinck, fifty-six, and Cutty,
fifty-two, were two different men. Cutty might mix his metaphors
occasionally, but he wasn't going to mix his ghosts.

He returned to his singular game. More tiaras and necklaces; and his
brain took firm hold of the theme which had in the beginning lured him
to the green stones.

Two-Hawks. That name bothered him. He knew he had heard it before, but
never in the Russian tongue. It might be that the chap had been spoofing
Kitty. Still, he had also called himself Hawksley.

The smoke thickened; there were frequent flares of matches. One by one
Cutty discarded the photographs, dropping them on the floor beside his
chair, his mind boring this way and that for a solution. He had now come
to the point where he ceased to see the photographs or the green stones.
The movements of his hands were almost automatic. And in this abstract
manner he came to the last photograph. He built a necklace and even
ventured an earring.

It was a glorious face--black eyes that followed you; full lipped; every
indication of fire and genius. It must be understood that he rarely saw
the photographs when he played this game. It wasn't an amusing pastime,
a mental relaxation. It was a unique game of solitaire, the photographs
and chrysoprase being substituted for cards; and in some inexplicable
manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled
his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or
recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a
solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and
his sight reestablished its ability to focus.

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated.

He seized the photograph excitedly, scattering the green stones. She!
The Calabrian, the enchanting colouratura who had vanished from the
world at the height of her fame, thirty-odd years gone! Two-Hawks!

Cutty saw himself at twenty, in the pit at La Scala, with music-mad
Milan all about him. Two-Hawks! He remembered now. The nickname the
young bloods had given her because she had been eternally guarded by her
mother and aunt, fierce-beaked Calabrians, who had determined that Rosa
should never throw herself away on some beggarly Adonis.

And this chap was her son! Yesterday, rich and powerful, with a name
that was open sesame wherever he went;