r idea of a prude?"

"A prude," stammered Lewis--"why a prude's a person with an exaggerated
idea of modesty, isn't it?"

"Bah!" said Leighton, "you are as flat as a dictionary. A prude is a far
more active evil than that. A prude, my boy, is one who has but a single
eye, and that in the back of his head, and who keeps his blind face set
toward nature. If he would be content to walk backward, the world would
get along more easily, and would like him better the farther he walked.
The reason the live world has always hated prudes is that it's forever
being stumbled on by them. Your prude clutches Irving to the small of
his back and cries, 'This alone is beauty!' But any man with two eyes
looks and answers, 'You are wrong; this is beauty alone.'

"And now do you see where we've come out? To make a thing of beauty
alone is to bring a flash of joy to a hard-pressed world. But joy is
never a force, not even an achievement. It's merely an acquisition. It
isn't alive. The man who writes on paper or in stone one throbbing cry
of the soul has lifted the world by the power of his single arm. He
alone lives. And it is written that you shall know life above all the
creatures that are in sea and land and in the heavens above the earth by
this sign: sole among the things that are, life is its own source and
its own end."

Leighton stopped.

"You see now," he added, "why half of me is sorry that it let the other
half smash up that cast. What claim has a puny person against one
flicker of eternal truth?"

"Yes," said Lewis, slowly, "I see. I can follow your logic to the very
end. I can't answer it. All I know is that I myself--I couldn't have
paid the price, nor--nor let Vi pay it."

"And to tell you the truth," said Leighton with a smile, "I don't know
that I'm sorry." Lewis rose to his feet.

"Well, Dad," he said, "it's about twelve o'clock."

"Go ahead, my boy," said Leighton. "Bring the lady to lunch to-day or
any other day--if she'll come. Just telephone Nelton."

CHAPTER XXXVI

DURING the next few days Leighton saw little of his son and nothing of
Folly, but he learned quite casually that the lady was occupying an
apartment overlooking Hyde Park. From that it was easy for him to guess
her address, and one morning, without saying anything to Lewis of his
plans, he presented himself at Folly's door. A trim maid opened to his
ring.

"Is Mlle. Delaires in, my dear?" asked Leighton.

The maid stiffened, and pee