flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he
was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine
days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and
waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat
Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense of
growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of
what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by the
fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful of his melons--had
lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after all, it's my
only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' he said sentimentally. As
if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine! On the keep of those
melons Kate and I could have lived like gods...

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to
drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the
afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September
afternoon--a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes on
the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one. Perhaps the
vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered cousin Joseph's
hideous black walnut library, I passed one of the under-gardeners, a
handsome full-throated Italian, who dashed out in such a hurry that
he nearly knocked me down. I remember thinking it queer that the
fellow, whom I had often seen about the melon-houses, did not bow to
me, or even seem to see me.

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened windows,
his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the last number
of the _Churchman_ at his elbow, and near it, on a huge dish, a fat
melon--the fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked at it I pictured
the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must have roused him, and