"I went with her--to the door. She asked me to wait outside. She was
gone a long time. I heard her sobbing----"

"Sobbing? Vi?"

Leighton nodded.

"So--so I went in."

Father and son looked steadily at each other for a moment. Then Lewis
said:

"You've forgiven me for my thought, Dad; now I beg your pardon for it. I
suppose you saw that that bit of modeling was never intended for the
Salon? It was meant for Vi--because--well, because I liked her enough
to----"

"I know," interrupted Leighton. "Well, it worked. It worked as such
cures seldom do. While Vi was sobbing her heart out on the couch, I
smashed up the statue with a mallet. That's my confession."

Lewis did not move.

"Did you hear what I said?" asked Leighton. "I smashed up your model of
Vi."

"I heard you, Dad," said Lewis. "But you mustn't expect me to get
excited over it, because it's what I should have done myself, once she
had seen it."

"When I did it," continued Leighton, "I had no doubts; but since then
I've thought a lot. I want you to know that if that cast had gone into
marble or bronze, it would have had the eternal life of art itself."

Lewis flushed with pleasure. He knew that such praise from his father
must have been weighed a thousand times before it gained utterance. Only
from one other man on earth could commendation bring such a thrill. As
the name of Le Brux came to his mind, it fell from his father's lips.

"Le Brux has been giving me an awful talking to."

"Le Brux!" cried Lewis. "Has he been here?"

"Only in spirit," said Leighton, smiling. "And this is what he said in
his voice of thunder: 'If I had been here, I would have stood by that
figure with a mallet and smashed the head of any man that raised a
finger against it. What is the world coming to when a mere life weighs
more in the balance than the most trifling material expression of
eternity?

"'But, Master,' I said, 'a gentleman must always remember the woman.'

"To which he replied, 'What business has an artist to be anything so
small as a mere gentleman? It is not alone for fame and repute that we
great have our being. If by the loss of my single soul I can touch a
thousand other souls to life, bring sight to the blind and hearing to
ears that would not hear, what, then, is my soul? Nothing.'"

Leighton stopped and leaned forward.

"Then he said this, and the thunder was gone from his voice: 'When all
the trappings of the world's religions have rotted away