The two Venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. Vera rose into
ecstasies about them, and called upon Charlie Woodruff to rise too. He
got up from his chair to examine the vases, which Vera had placed close
together side by side at the corner of the mantelpiece nearest to him.
Vera and Woodruff also stood close together side by side. And just as
Woodruff was about to handle the vases, Vera knocked his arm; his arm
collided with one vase; that vase collided with the next, and both fell
to earth--to the hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth.

IV

They were smashed to atoms.

Vera screamed. She screamed twice, and ran out of the room.

'Stephen, Stephen!' she cried hysterically. 'Charlie has broken my
vases, both of them. It IS too bad of him. He's really too clumsy!'

There was a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a moment
all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand crystal fragments
on the hearth.

'But--' began Charlie Woodruff.

And that was all he did say.

He and Vera and Stephen had been friends since infancy, so she had the
right not to conceal her feelings before him; Stephen had the same
right. They both exercised it.

'But--' began Charlie again.

'Oh, never mind,' Stephen stopped him curtly. 'Accidents can't be
helped.'

'I shall get another pair,' said Woodruff.

'No, you won't,' replied Stephen. 'You can't. There isn't another pair
in the world. See?'

The two men simultaneously perceived that Vera was weeping. She was
very pretty in tears, but that did not prevent the masculine world from
feeling awkward and self-conscious. Charlie had notions about going out
and burying himself.

'Come, Vera, come,' her husband enjoined, blowing his nose with
unnecessary energy, bad as his cold was.

'I--I liked those vases more than anything you've--you've ever given
me,' Vera blubbered, charmingly, patting her eyes.

Stephen glanced at Woodruff, as who should say: 'Well, my boy, you
uncorked those tears, I'll leave you to deal with 'em. You see, I'm an
invalid in a dressing-gown. I leave you.'

And went.

'No-but-look-here-I-say,' Charlie Woodruff expostulated to Vera when he
was alone with her--he often started an expostulation with that
singular phrase. 'I'm awfully sorry. I don't know how it happened. You
must let me give you something else.'

Vera shook her head.

'No,' she said. 'I wanted Stephen awfully to give me that music-stool
that I told you