at are you going to do
about the matter?"

Wayne, flushed, dusty, perspiring, scowled at him.

"What matter?"

"The foreclosure."

"I don't know; how can I know until I see Guilford?"

"But you need the hatchery----"

"I know it."

"But he won't let you discuss it----"

"If," said Wayne angrily, "you had spent half the time talking business
with the poet that you spent picking strawberries with his helpless
children I should not now be lugging this suit-case up this mountain.
Decency requires few observations from _you_ just now."

"Pooh!" said Briggs. "Wait till you see Iole."

"Why Iole? Why not Vanessa?"

"Don't--that's all," retorted Briggs, reddening.

Wayne plumped his valise down in the dust, mopped his brow, folded his
arms, and regarded Briggs between the eyes.

"You have the infernal cheek, after getting me up here, to intimate that
you have taken the pick?"

"I do," replied Briggs firmly. The two young fellows faced each other.

"By the way," observed Briggs casually, "the stock they come from is as
good if not better than ours. This is a straight game."

"Do you mean to say that you--you are--seriously----"

"Something like it. There! Now you know."

"For Heaven's sake, Stuyve----"

"Yes, for Heaven's sake and in Heaven's name don't get any wrong ideas
into your vicious head."

"What?"

"I tell you," said Briggs, "that I was never closer to falling in love
than I am to-day. And I've been here just two weeks."

"Oh, Lord----"

"Amen," muttered Briggs. "Here, give me your carpet-bag, you brute.
We're on the edge of Paradise."

III

[Illustration]

"Before we discuss my financial difficulties," said the poet, lifting
his plump white hand and waving it in unctuous waves about the veranda,
"let me show you our home, Mr. Wayne. May I?"

"Certainly," said Wayne politely, following Guilford into the house.

They entered a hall; there was absolutely nothing in the hall except a
small table on which reposed a single daisy in a glass of water.

"Simplicity," breathed Guilford--"a single blossom against a background
of nothing at all. You follow me, Mr. Wayne?"

"Not--exactly----"

The poet smiled a large, tender smile, and, with inverted thumb,
executed a gesture as though making several spots in the air.

"The concentration of composition," he explained; "the elimination of
complexity; the isolation of the concrete in the center of the abstract;
something in the mi