sallies.

The clouds of tobacco smoke grew thicker. The hum of conversation
louder; especially at an adjoining table where one lean old Academician
in a velvet skull cap was discussing the new impressionistic craze which
had just begun to show itself in the work of the younger men. This had
gone on for some minutes when the old man turned upon them savagely and
began ridiculing the new departure as a cloak to hide poor drawing, an
outspoken young painter asserting in their defence, that any technique
was helpful if it would kill off the snuff-box school in which the man
under the skull cap held first place.

Morris had lent an ear to the discussion and again took up the cudgels.

"You young fellows are right," he cried, twisting his body toward their
table. The realists have had their day; they work a picture to death;
all of them. If you did but know it, it really takes two men to paint a
great picture--one to do the work and the other to kill him when he has
done enough."

"Pity some of your murderers, Holker, didn't start before they stretched
their canvases," laughed Harrington.

And so the hours sped on.

All this time Peter had been listening with one ear wide open--the one
nearest the door--for any sound in that direction. French masterpieces
Impressionism and the rest of it did not interest him to-night.
Something else was stirring him--something he had been hugging to his
heart all day.

Only the big and little coals in his own fireplace in Fifteenth Street,
and perhaps the great back-log, beside himself, knew the cause. He
had not taken Miss Felicia into his confidence--that would never have
done--might, indeed, have spoilt everything. Even when he had risen from
Morris's coterie to greet Henry MacFarlane--Ruth's father--his intimate
friend for years, and who answered his hand-shake with--"Well, you
old rascal--what makes you look so happy?--anybody left you a
million?"--even then he gave no inkling of the amount of bottled
sunshine he was at the precise moment carrying inside his well-groomed
body, except to remark with all his twinkles and wrinkles scampering
loose:

"Seeing you, Henry--" an answer which, while it only excited derision
and a sly thrust of his thumb into Peter's ribs, was nevertheless
literally true if the distinguished engineer did but know it.

It was only when the hours dragged on and his oft-consulted watch marked
ten o'clock that the merry wrinkles began to straighten and the