volubly. He was really choking with laughter. A little later, at
seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five
minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out--and saw
Dick bustling off at our approach. It was sad really. There was an
element of the tragic in it. But not to Peter. He was all laughter, all
but apoplectic gayety. "Oh, by George!" he choked. "This is too much!
Oh, ho! This is great! his poor heiress! And he came back! Har! Har!
Har!"

"Peter, you dog," I said, "aren't you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in
this way?"

"Not a bit, not a bit!" he insisted most enthusiastically. "Do him good.
Why shouldn't he suffer? He'll get over it. He's always bluffing about
his heiresses. Now he's lost a real one. Har! Har! Har!" and he fairly
choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told.
He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was
laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, "Oh, something--a joke I
played on a fellow once."

If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much. But that lost romance!
That faded dream!

Not so long after this, the following winter, I left St. Louis and did
not see Peter for several years, during which time I drifted through
various cities to New York. We kept up a more or less desultory
correspondence which resulted eventually in his contributing to a paper
of which I had charge in New York, and later, in part at least I am
sure, in his coming there. I noticed one thing, that although Peter had
no fixed idea as to what he wished to be--being able to draw, write,