mong his clothes, a pale,
flesh-tinted dressing gown he had liked to see her wear, with a
perfume--oh, a perfume that was still Eden Bower! He shut the door behind
him and there, in the dark, for a moment he lost his manliness. It was
when he held this garment to him that he found a letter in the pocket.

The note was written with a lead pencil, in haste: She was sorry that he
was angry, but she still didn't know just what she had done. She had
thought Mr. Ives would be useful to him; she guessed he was too proud.
She wanted awfully to see him again, but Fate came knocking at her door
after he had left her. She believed in Fate. She would never forget him,
and she knew he would become the greatest painter in the world. Now she
must pack. She hoped he wouldn't mind her leaving the dressing gown;
somehow, she could never wear it again.

After Hedger read this, standing under the gas, he went back into the
closet and knelt down before the wall; the knot hole had been plugged up
with a ball of wet paper,--the same blue note-paper on which her letter
was written.

He was hard hit. Tonight he had to bear the loneliness of a whole
lifetime. Knowing himself so well, he could hardly believe that such a
thing had ever happened to him, that such a woman had lain happy and
contented in his arms. And now it was over. He turned out the light and
sat down on his painter's stool before the big window. Caesar, on the
floor beside him, rested his head on his master's knee. We must leave
Hedger thus, sitting in his tank with his dog, looking up at the stars.

* * * * *

COMING, APHRODITE! This legend, in electric lights over the Lexington
Opera House, had long announced the return of Eden Bower to New York
after years of spectacular success in Paris. She came at last, under the
management of an American Opera Company, but bringing her own _chef
d'orchestre_.

One bright December afternoon Eden Bower was going down Fifth Avenue in
her car, on the way to her broker, in Williams Street. Her thoughts were
entirely upon stocks,--Cerro de Pasco, and how much she should buy of
it,--when she suddenly looked up and realized that she was skirting
Washington Square. She had not seen the place since she rolled out of it
in an old-fashioned four-wheeler to seek her fortune, eighteen years ago.

"_Arretez, Alphonse. Attendez moi_," she called, and opened the door
before he could reach it. The children who were stre