s
applause of the hearty and adoring company.

"That man Horace Endicott!" she exclaimed with contempt. "Bah! But it's
interesting, of course."

"What a compliment! what acting! oh, incomparable man!" said Edith,
enraged at his success before such an audience. Her husband smiled
behind his hand.

"You have a fine imagination, Colette, but I would not give a penny for
your instinct," said Sonia.

"My instinct will win just the same, but I fear we shall have to go to
California. This man is too clever for commonplace people."

"Arthur Dillon is a fine orator," said Curran mischievously, "and
to-morrow night you shall hear him at his best on the sorrows of
Ireland."

Sonia laughed heartily and mockingly. Were not these same sorrows, from
their constancy and from repetition, become the joke of the world?
Curran could have struck her evil face for the laugh.

"Was your husband a speaker?" he asked.

"Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make
a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh,
it's too absurd."

"And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other
country?" he replied savagely.

"Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she
said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his
description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting."

The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous
meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and
in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia,
impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon,
could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who
poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric,
with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great
actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes
moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not
Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would
have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had
terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could
have loved Dillon.

"So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before
him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must
be done without delay," was her command to Edith.