in the river, and that the little girl died too--I mean when she was a
little girl--wasted away, or something--I'm such a beastly idiot about
expressing myself, that I wouldn't dare to write to you at all if you
weren't really great. That is actually all I can tell you, and I am
afraid the painter was their only biographer."

The author was gratified that the girl had died young, but grieved for
the boy. Although he had avoided the gallery of late, his practised
imagination had evoked from the throngs of history the high-handed and
brilliant, surely adventurous career of the third Earl of Teignmouth. He
had pondered upon the deep delights of directing such a mind and
character, and had caught himself envying the dust that was older still.
When he read of the lad's early death, in spite of his regret that such
promise should have come to naught, he admitted to a secret thrill of
satisfaction that the boy had so soon ceased to belong to any one. Then
he smiled with both sadness and humor.

"What an old fool I am!" he admitted. "I believe I not only wish those
children were alive, but that they were my own."

The frank admission proved fatal. He made straight for the gallery. The
boy, after the interval of separation, seemed more spiritedly alive than
ever, the little girl to suggest, with her faint appealing smile, that
she would like to be taken up and cuddled.

"I must try another way," he thought, desperately, after that long
communion. "I must write them out of me."

He went back to the library and locked up the _tour de force_ which had
ceased to command his classic faculty. At once, he began to write the