, but as a
matter of fact he had in the instant become a hero to himself. Women
were faithless: misogamists in prose and poetry had so chronicled the
fact, and he had already, at this early age, become the victim of their
perfidy. Marian Seymour should have known the depth of his love for her;
she should have known that he would have told her of his affection had
she given him the opportunity; and the mere fact that he had never so
declared himself was not of the slightest importance. She had
deliberately disregarded his impassioned though unexpressed sentiments
toward her, and had thrown herself away on a man he did not even know!

Fortunately, Time treats with kindly hand those tragedies which are
imagined as well as those which actually exist. Each year added to the
luster of the memory. Marian Seymour herself would not have recognized
her own face could Huntington have translated it out of the figments of
his mind upon the crude medium of canvas. And, be it said, had
Huntington come face to face with the original during these years, it is
doubtful whether he would have recognized her; for the idealization had
become absolutely real to him. No sculptor had ever modeled hand and arm
so perfect as that which the yellowed glove had held; no foot was ever
shaped with graceful line equal to that which once the satin slipper had
incased. The faithlessness of woman had long since been forgotten, and
the sanctity of this romance, which might have been, provided all the
details which it would otherwise have lacked. Each year made it more
real, until now there was no doubt about it. Other men worshiped at the
shrine of departed dear ones with no greater sincerity than did
Montgomery Huntington revere this near-romance of his life.

So, as he sat there, he was not the bachelor his friends considered him,
but rather a man bereft of wife and children. Cosden, knowing nothing of
this secret grief, had wantonly torn the veil aside and exposed the
wound. Yet, with the sorrow of the widower and the childless, there must
have come back to Huntington some memories which were not sad, for when
Dixon happened upon him in the morning, soundly sleeping in his
favorite chair with this curious exhibit before him, and with a pink
slipper firmly grasped within his hand, there was a smile as if of
happiness upon his face. And Dixon, discreet valet that he was, showed
no surprise, a half-hour later, when he found the table and its strange
conte