hand pointed.

"What's that?" he muttered fiercely.

"That," to which he was pointing, was a pictorial bronze, the figure of
a girl, upright in a cockleshell boat, made of a rose-petal, her arms
outspread to the breeze that was bearing her out across sunlit ripples.
Beneath was the legend: "Far Ports." The face, eager, laughing,
passionate, adventurous, was the face of Minnie Munn. Therein the Bonnie
Lassie had been prophetess as well as poet and sculptress, for she had
finished the bronze before Minnie left us.

"That," I answered the strong, pink man, trying to shake loose his grip,
"is a sculpture by Cecily Willard, otherwise Mrs. Cyrus Staten."

"What'll she take for it?"

"It can't be bought." I spoke with authority, for the figurines that the
Bonnie Lassie sets in her window are not for sale, but for us of Our
Square, who love them.

"Anything can be bought," he retorted, with his quiet, hoarse
persuasiveness, "at a price. I've got the price, no matter what it is."

Suddenly I understood my pink and hard acquaintance. I understood that
stale look in his eyes. Tears do not bring that. Nothing brings it but
sleepless thoughts beyond the assuagement of tears. Behind such eyes the
heart is aching cold and the brain searing hot. Who should know better
than I, though the kindly years have brought their healing! But here was
a wound, raw and fresh and savage. I put my hand on his shoulder.