rse he sculpted, and earned slathers of money.
But she--?"

"Oh, ouch--help!" cried the Sculptor. "Do I know?"

"Exactly!" answered the Critic, "and that you don't sticks out in
every line of your story."

"Goodness me, you might ask the same thing about Leda, or Helen of
Troy."

"Ha! Ha!" laughed the Doctor. "But we know what they did!"

"A lot you do. It is because they are old classics, and you accept
them, whereas my story is quite new and original--and you were
unprepared for it, and so you can't appreciate it. Anyway, it's my
first-born story, and I'll defend it with my life."

Only a laugh replied to the challenge, and the attitude of defense he
struck, as he leaped to his feet, though the Journalist said, under
his breath, "It takes a carver in stone to think of a tale like that!"

"But think," replied the Doctor, "how much trouble some women would
escape if they kept on saying A B C like that--for the A B C is
usually lovely--and when it was time to X Y Z--often terrible, they
just slipped out through the 'open door.'"

"On the other hand, they _risk_ losing heaps of fun," said the
Journalist.

"What I like about that story," said the Lawyer, "is that it is so
aristocratic. Every one seems to have plenty of money. They all three
do just what they like, have no duties but to analyze themselves, and
evidently everything goes like clockwork. The husband enjoys being
morbid, and has the means to be gloriously so. The sculptor likes to
carve Edgar Allan Poe all over the place, and the fair lady is able to
gratify the tastes of both men."

"You can laugh as much as you please," sighed the Sculptor, "I wish it
had happened to me."

"Well," said the Doctor, "you have the privilege of going to bed and
dreaming that it did."

"Thank you," answered the Sculptor. "That is just what I am going to
do."

"What did I tell you last night?" said the Doctor, under his breath,
as he watched the Sculptor going slowly toward the house. "Bet he has
been telling that tale to himself under many skies for years!"

"I suppose," laughed the Journalist, "that the only reason he has
never built the tomb is that he has never had the money."

"Oh, be fair!" said the Violinist. "He has not built the tomb because
he is not his father. The old man would have done it in a minute, only
he lacked imagination. You bet he never day-dreamed, and yet what
skill he had, and what adventures! He never saw anything but the facts
of lif