BY

CHARLES WARREN STODDARD

medallion

Copyright, 1903, by A. M. Robertson Reprinted from For the Pleasure of His Company

I

THERE was an episode in the life of Paul Clitheroe that may possibly throw some little light upon the mystery of his taking off; and in connection with this matter it is perhaps worth detailing.

One morning Paul found a drop-letter in the mail which greeted him daily. It ran as follows:

The "tomorrow" referred to was the very day on which Paul received the sweet reminder. The reception of the message somewhat disturbed his customary routine. To be sure, he glanced through the morning journal as usual; repaired to the Greek chop-house with the dingy green walls, the smoked ceiling, the glass partition that separated the guests from a kitchen lined with shining copper pans, where a cook in a white paper cap wafted himself about in clouds of vapor, lit by occasional flashes of light and ever curling flames, like a soul expiating its sins in a prescribed but savory purgatory. He sat in his chosen seat, ignored his neighbors with his customary nonchalance, and returned to his room, as if nothing were about to happen. But he accomplished little, for he felt that the day was not wholly his; so slight a cause seemed to change the whole current of his life from hour to hour.

In due season Paul entered a street car which ran to the extreme limit of San Francisco. Harry English lived not far from the terminus, and to the cozy home of this most genial and hospitable gentleman the youth wended his way. The house stood upon the steep slope of a hill; the parlor was upon a level with the street,—a basement dining-room below it,—but the rear of the house was quite in the air and all of the rear windows commanded a magnificent view of the North Bay with its islands and the opposite mountainous shore.

"Infinite riches in a little room," was the expression which came involuntarily to Paul's lips the first time he crossed the threshold of Thespian Lodge. He might have said it of the Lodge any day in the week; the atmosphere was always balmy and soothing; one could sit there without talking or caring to talk; even without realizing that one was not talking and not being talked to; the silence was never ominous; it was a wholesome and restful home, where Paul was ever welcome and whither he often fled for refreshment.

The walls of the whole house were crowded with pictures, framed photographs and autographs, chiefly of theatrical celebrities; both "Harry," as the world familiarly called him, and his wife, were members of the dramatic profession and in their time had played many parts in almost as many lands and latitudes.

There was one chamber in this delightful home devoted exclusively to the pleasures of entomology, and there the head of the house passed most of the hours which he was free to spend apart from the duties of his profession. He was a man of inexhaustible resources, consummate energy, and unflagging industry, yet one who was never in the least hurried or flurried; and he was Paul's truest and most judicious friend.

The small parlor at the Englishes was nearly filled with guests when Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor poet whose bubble reputation was at that moment resplendent with local rainbows. Her chief listener was a languid beauty of literary aspirations, who, in a striking pose, was fit audience for the little lady as she frothed over with delightful, if not contagious, enthusiasm.

Mrs. English, who had been a famous belle—no one who knew her now would for a moment question the fact—devoted herself to the entertainment of a group of silent people, people of the sort that are not only colorless, but seem to dissipate the color in their immediate vicinity. The world is full of such; they spring up, unaccountably, in locations where they appear to the least advantage. Many a clever person who would delight to adorn a circle he longs to enter, and where he would be hailed with joy, through modesty, hesitates to enter it; while others, who are of no avail in any wise whatever, walk bravely in and find themselves secure through a quiet system of polite insistence. Among the latter, the kind of people to be merely tolerated, we find, also, the large majority.

Two children remarkably self-possessed seized upon Paul the moment he entered the room: a beautiful lad as gentle and as graceful as a girl, and his tiny sister, who bore herself with the dignity of a little lady of Lilliput. He was happy with them, quite as happy as if they were as old and experienced as their elders and as well entertained by them, likewise. He never in his life made the mistake that is, alas, made by most parents and guardians, of treating children as if they were little simpletons who can be easily deceived. How often they look with scorn upon their elders who are playing the hypocrite to eyes which are, for the most part, singularly critical! Having paid his respects to those present—he was known to all—Paul was led a willing captive into the chamber where Harry English and a brother professional, an eccentric comedian, who apparently never uttered a line which he had not learned out of a play-book, were examining with genuine enthusiasm certain cases of brilliantly tinted butterflies.

The children were quite at their ease in this house, and no wonder; California children are born philosophers; to them the marvels of the somewhat celebrated entomological collection were quite familiar; again and again they had studied the peculiarities of the most rare and beautiful specimens of insect life under the loving tutelage of their friend, who had spent his life and a small fortune in gathering together his treasures, and they were even able to explain in the prettiest fashion the origin and use of the many curious objects that were distributed about the rooms.

Meanwhile Mme. Lillian, the dramatic one, had left her bower in the bay window and was flitting to and fro in nervous delight; she had much to say and it was always worth listening to. With available opportunities she would have long since become famous and probably a leader of her sex; but it was her fate to coach those of meaner capacities who were ultimately to win fame and fortune while she toiled on, in genteel poverty, to the end of her weary days.

No two women could be more unlike than this many-summered butterfly, as she hovered among her friends, and a certain comedy queen who was posing and making a picture of herself; the latter was regarded by the society-privates, who haunted with fearful delight the receptions at Thespian Lodge, with the awe that inspired so many inexperienced people who look upon members of the dramatic profession as creatures of another and not a better world, and considerably lower than the angels.

Two hours passed swiftly by; nothing ever jarred upon the guests in this house; the perfect suavity of the host and hostess forbade anything like antagonism among their friends; and though such dissimilar elements might never again harmonize, they were tranquil for the time at least.

The adieus were being said in the chamber of entomology, which was somewhat overcrowded and faintly impregnated with the odor of corrosive sublimate. From the windows overlooking the bay there was visible the expanse of purple water and the tawny, sunburnt hills beyond, while pale-blue misty mountains marked the horizon with an undulating outline. A ship under full sail—a glorious and inspiring sight—was bearing down before the stiff westerly breeze.

Mme. Lillian made an apt quotation which terminated with a Delsartean gesture and a rising inflection that seemed to exact something from somebody; the comedienne struck one of her property attitudes, so irresistibly comic that every one applauded, and Mme. Lillian laughed herself to tears; then they all drifted toward the door. As mankind in general has much of the sheep in him, one guest having got as far as the threshold, the others followed; Paul was left alone with the Englishes and those clever youngsters, whose coachman, accustomed to waiting indefinitely at the Lodge, was dutifully dozing on the box seat. The children began to romp immediately upon the departure of the last guest, and during the riotous half-hour that succeeded, there was a fresh arrival. The door-bell rang; Mrs. English, who was close at hand, turned to answer it and at once bubbled over with unaffected delight. Harry, still having his defunct legions in solemn review, recognized a cheery, un-American voice, and cried, "There she is at last!" as he hastened to meet the newcomer.

Paul was called to the parlor where a young lady of the ultra-blonde type stood with a faultlessly gloved hand in the hand of each of her friends; she was radiant with life and health. Of all the young ladies Paul could at that moment remember having seen, she was the most exquisitely clad; the folds of her gown fell about her form like the drapery of a statue; he was fascinated from the first moment of their meeting. He noticed that nothing about her was ever disarranged; neither was there anything superfluous or artificial, in manner or dress. She was in his opinion an entirely artistic creation. She met him with a perfectly frank smile, as if she were an old friend suddenly discovering herself to him, and when Harry English had placed the hand of this delightful person in one of Paul's she at once withdrew the other, which Mrs. English fondly held, and struck it in a hearty half-boyish manner upon their clasped hands, saying, "Awfully glad to see you, Paul!" and she evidently meant it.

This was Miss. Juno, an American girl bred in Europe, now, after years of absence, passing a season in her native land. Her parents, who had taken a country home in one of the California valleys, found in their only child all that was desirable in life. This was not to be wondered at; it may be said of her in the theatrical parlance that she "filled the stage." When Miss. Juno dawned upon the scene the children grew grave, and, after a little delay, having taken formal leave of the company, they entered their carriage and were rapidly driven homeward.

If Paul and Miss. Juno had been formed for one another and were now, at the right moment and under the most favorable auspices, brought together for the first time, they could not have mated more naturally. If Miss. Juno had been a young man, instead of a very charming woman, she would of course have been Paul's chum. If Paul had been a young woman—some of his friends thought he had narrowly escaped it and did not hesitate to say so—he would instinctively have become her confidante. As it was, they promptly entered into a sympathetic friendship which seemed to have been without beginning and was apparently to be without end.

They began to talk of the same things at the same moment, often uttering the very same words and then turned to one another with little shouts of unembarrassed laughter. They agreed upon all points, and aroused each other to a ridiculous pitch of enthusiasm over nothing in particular.

Harry English beamed; there was evidently nothing wanted to complete his happiness. Mrs. English, her eyes fairly dancing with delight, could only exclaim at intervals, "Bless the boy!" or, "What a pair of children!" then fondly pass her arm about the waist of Miss. Juno—which was not waspish in girth—or rest her hand upon Paul's shoulder with a show of maternal affection peculiarly grateful to him. It was with difficulty the half-dazed young fellow could keep apart from Miss. Juno. If he found she had wandered into the next room, while he was engaged for a moment, he followed at his earliest convenience, and when their eyes met they smiled responsively without knowing why, and indeed not caring in the least to know.

They were as ingenuous as two children in their liking for one another; their trust in each other would have done credit to the Babes in the Wood. What Paul realized, without any preliminary analysis of his mind or heart, was that he wanted to be near her, very near her; and that he was miserable when this was not the case. If she was out of his sight for a moment the virtue seemed to have gone from him and he fell into the pathetic melancholy which he enjoyed in the days when he wrote a great deal of indifferent verse, and was burdened with the conviction that his mission in life was to make rhymes without end.

In those days, he had acquired the habit of pitying himself. The emotional middle-aged woman is apt to encourage the romantic young man in pitying himself; it is a grewsome habit, and stands sturdily in the way of all manly effort. Paul had outgrown it to a degree, but there is nothing easier in life than a relapse—perhaps nothing so natural, yet often so unexpected.

Too soon the friends who had driven Miss. Juno to Thespian Lodge and passed on—being unacquainted with the Englishes—called to carry her away with them. She was shortly—in a day or two in fact—to rejoin her parents, and she did not hesitate to invite Paul to pay them a visit. This he assured her he would do with pleasure, and secretly vowed that nothing on earth should prevent him. They shook hands cordially at parting, and were still smiling their baby smiles in each other's faces when they did it. Paul leaned against the door-jamb, while the genial Harry and his wife followed his new-found friend to the carriage, where they were duly presented to its occupants—said occupants promising to place Thespian Lodge upon their list. As the carriage whirled away, Miss. Juno waved that exquisitely gloved hand from the window and Paul's heart beat high; somehow he felt as if he had never been quite so happy. And this going away struck him as being a rather cruel piece of business. To tell the whole truth, he couldn't understand why she should go at all.

He felt it more and more, as he sat at dinner with his old friends, the Englishes, and ate with less relish than common the delicious Yorkshire pudding and drank the musty ale. He felt it as he accompanied his friends to the theater, where he sat with Mrs. English, while she watched with pride the husband whose impersonations she was never weary of witnessing; but Paul seemed to see him without recognizing him, and even the familiar voice sounded unfamiliar, or like a voice in a dream. He felt it more and more when good Mrs. English gave him a nudge toward the end of the evening and called him "a stupid," half in sport and half in earnest; and when he had delivered that excellent woman into the care of her liege lord and had seen them securely packed into the horse-car that was to drag them tediously homeward in company with a great multitude of suffocating fellow-sufferers, he felt it; and all the way out the dark street and up the hill that ran, or seemed to run, into outer darkness—where his home was—he felt as if he had never been the man he was until now, and that it was all for her sake and through her influence that this sudden and unexpected transformation had come to pass. And it seemed to him that if he were not to see her again, very soon, his life would be rendered valueless; and that only to see her were worth all the honor and glory that he had ever aspired to in his wildest dreams; and that to be near her always and to feel that he were much—nay, everything—to her, as before God he felt that at that moment she was to him, would make his life one long Elysium, and to death would add a thousand stings.

II

Saadi had no hand in it, yet all Persia could not outdo it. The whole valley ran to roses. They covered the earth; they fell from lofty trellises in fragrant cataracts; they played over the rustic arbors like fountains of color and perfume; they clambered to the cottage roof and scattered their bright petals in showers upon the grass. They were of every tint and texture; of high and low degree, modest or haughty as the case might be—but roses all of them, and such roses as California alone can boast. And some were fat or passÉ, and more's the pity, but all were fragrant, and the name of that sweet vale was Santa Rosa.

Paul was in the garden with Miss. Juno. He had followed her thither with what speed he dared. She had expected him; there was not breathing-space for conventionality between these two. In one part of the garden sat an artist at his easel; by his side a lady somewhat his senior, but of the type of face and figure that never really grows old, or looks it. She was embroidering flowers from nature, tinting them to the life, and rivaling her companion in artistic effects. These were the parents of Miss. Juno—or rather not quite that. Her mother had been twice married; first, a marriage of convenience darkened the earlier years of her life; Miss. Juno was the only reward for an age of domestic misery. A clergyman joined these parties—God had nothing to do with the compact; it would seem that he seldom has. A separation very naturally and very properly followed in the course of time; a young child was the only possible excuse for the delay of the divorce. Thus are the sins of the fathers visited upon the grandchildren. Then came a marriage of love. The artist who having found his ideal had never known a moment's weariness, save when he was parted from her side. Their union was perfect; God had joined them. The stepfather to Miss. Juno had always been like a big brother to her—even as her mother had always seemed like an elder sister.

Oh, what a trio was that, my countrymen, where liberty, fraternity and equality joined hands without howling about it and making themselves a nuisance in the nostrils of their neighbors!

Miss. Juno stood in a rose-arbor and pointed to the artists at their work.

"Did you ever see anything like that, Paul?"

"Like what?"

"Like those sweet simpletons yonder. They have for years been quite oblivious of the world about them. Thrones might topple, empires rise and fall, it would matter nothing to them so long as their garden bloomed, and the birds nested and sung, and he sold a picture once in an age that the larder might not go bare."

"I've seen something like it, Miss. Juno. I've seen fellows who never bothered themselves about the affairs of others,—who, in short, minded their own business strictly—and they got credit for being selfish."

"Were they happy?"

"Yes, in their way. Probably their way wasn't my way, and their kind of happiness would bore me to death. You know happiness really can't be passed around, like bon-bons or sherbet, for every one to taste. I hate bon-bons: do you like them?"

"That depends upon the quality and flavor—and—perhaps somewhat upon who offers them. I never buy bon-bons for my private and personal pleasure. Do any of you fellows really care for bon-bons?"

"That depends upon the kind of happiness we are in quest of; I mean the quality and flavor of the girl we are going to give them to."

"Have girls a flavor?"

"Some of them have—perhaps most of them haven't; neither have they form nor feature, nor tint nor texture, nor anything that appeals to a fellow of taste and sentiment."

"I'm sorry for these girls of yours——"

"You needn't be sorry for the girls; they are not my girls, and not one of them ever will be mine if I can help it——"

"Oh, indeed!"

"They are nothing to me, and I'm nothing to them; but they are just—they are just the formless sort of thing that a formless sort of fellow always marries; they help to fill up the world, you know."

"Yes, they help to fill a world that is overfull already. Poor Mama and Eugene don't know how full it is. When Gene wants to sell a picture and can't, he thinks it's a desert island."

"Probably they could live on a desert island and be perfectly happy and content," said Paul.

"Of course they could; the only trouble would be that unless some one called them at the proper hours they'd forget to eat—and some day they'd be found dead locked in their last embrace."

"How jolly!"

"Oh, very jolly for very young lovers; they are usually such fools!"

"And yet, I believe I'd like to be a fool for love's sake, Miss. Juno."

"Oh, Paul, you are one for your own,—at least I'll think so, if you work yourself into this silly vein!"

Paul was silent and thoughtful. After a pause she continued.

"The trouble with you is, you fancy yourself in love with every new girl you meet—at least with the latest one, if she is at all out of the ordinary line."

"The trouble with me is that I don't keep on loving the same girl long enough to come to the happy climax—if the climax is to be a happy one; of course it doesn't follow that it is to be anything of the sort. I've been brought up in the bosom of too many families to believe in the lasting quality of love. Yet they are happy, you say, those two gentle people perpetuating spring on canvas and cambric. See, there is a small cloud of butterflies hovering about them—one of them is panting in fairy-like ecstasy on the poppy that decorates your Mama's hat!"

Paul rolled a cigarette and offered it to Miss. Juno, in a mild spirit of bravado. To his delight she accepted it, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a girl to do. He rolled another and they sat down together in the arbor full of contentment.

"Have you never been in love?" asked Paul suddenly.

"Yes, I suppose so. I was engaged once; you know girls instinctively engage themselves to some one whom they fancy; they imagine themselves in love, and it is a pleasant fallacy. My engagement might have gone on forever, if he had contented himself with a mere engagement. He was a young army officer stationed miles and miles away. We wrote volumes of letters to each other—and they were clever letters; it was rather like a seaside novelette, our love affair. He was lonely, or restless, or something, and pressed his case. Then Mama and Gene—those ideal lovers—put their feet down and would none of it."

"And you?"

"Of course I felt perfectly wretched for a whole week, and imagined myself cruelly abused. You see he was a foreigner, without money; he was heir to a title, but that would have brought him no advantages in the household."

"You recovered. What became of him?"

"I never learned. He seemed to fade away into thin air. I fear I was not very much in love."

"I wonder if all girls are like you—if they forget so easily?"

"You have yourself declared that the majority have neither form nor feature; perhaps they have no feeling. How do men feel about a broken engagement?"

"I can only speak for myself. There was a time when I felt that marriage was the inevitable fate of all respectable people. Some one wanted me to marry a certain some one else. I didn't seem to care much about it; but my friend was one of those natural-born match-makers; she talked the young lady up to me in such a shape that I almost fancied myself in love and actually began to feel that I'd be doing her an injustice if I permitted her to go on loving and longing for the rest of her days. So one day I wrote her a proposal; it was the kind of proposal one might decline without injuring a fellow's feelings in the least—and she did it!" After a thoughtful pause he continued:

"By Jove! But wasn't I immensely relieved when her letter came; such a nice, dear, good letter it was, too, in which she assured me there had evidently been a mistake somewhere, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than the hope of marrying me. So she let me down most beautifully——"

"And offered to be a sister to you?"

"Perhaps; I don't remember now; I always felt embarrassed after that when her name was mentioned. I couldn't help thinking what an infernal ass I'd made of myself."

"It was all the fault of your friend."

"Of course it was; I'd never have dreamed of proposing to her if I hadn't been put up to it by the match-maker. Oh, what a lot of miserable marriages are brought on in just this way! You see when I like a girl ever so much, I seem to like her too well to marry her. I think it would be mean of me to marry her."

"Why?"

"Because—because I'd get tired after a while; everybody does, sooner or later,—everybody save your Mama and Eugene,—and then I'd say something or do something I ought not to say or do, and I'd hate myself for it; or she'd say something or do something that would make me hate her. We might, of course, get over it and be very nice to one another; but we could never be quite the same again. Wounds leave scars, and you can't forget a scar—can you?"

"You may scar too easily!"

"I suppose I do, and that is the very best reason why I should avoid the occasion of one."

"So you have resolved never to marry?"

"Oh, I've resolved it a thousand times, and yet, somehow, I'm forever meeting some one a little out of the common; some one who takes me by storm, as it were; some one who seems to me a kind of revelation, and then I feel as if I must marry her whether or no; sometimes I fear I shall wake up and find myself married in spite of myself—wouldn't that be frightful?"

"Frightful indeed—and then you'd have to get used to it, just as most married people get used to it in the course of time. You know it's a very matter-of-fact world we live in, and it takes very matter-of-fact people to keep it in good running order."

"Yes. But for these drudges, these hewers of wood and drawers of water, that ideal pair yonder could not go on painting and embroidering things of beauty with nothing but the butterflies to bother them."

"Butterflies don't bother; they open new vistas of beauty, and they set examples that it would do the world good to follow; the butterfly says, 'my mission is to be brilliant and jolly and to take no thought of the morrow.'"

"It's the thought of the morrow, Miss. Juno, that spoils today for me,—that morrow—who is going to pay the rent of it? Who is going to keep it in food and clothes?"

"Paul, you have already lived and loved, where there is no rent to pay and where the clothing worn is not worth mentioning; as for the food and the drink in that delectable land, nature provides them both. I don't see why you need to take thought of the morrow; all you have to do is to take passage for some South Sea Island, and let the world go by."

"But the price of the ticket, my friend; where is that to come from? To be sure I'm only a bachelor, and have none but myself to consider. What would I do if I had a wife and family to provide for?"

"You'd do as most other fellows in the same predicament do; you'd provide for them as well as you could; and if that wasn't sufficient, you'd desert them, or blow your brains out and leave them to provide for themselves."

"An old bachelor is a rather comfortable old party. I'm satisfied with my manifest destiny; but I'm rather sorry for old maids—aren't you?"

"That depends; of course everything in life depends; some of the most beautiful, the most blessed, the most bountifully happy women I have ever known were old maids; I propose to be one myself—if I live long enough!"

After an interlude, during which the bees boomed among the honey-blossoms, the birds caroled on the boughs, and the two artists laughed softly as they chatted at their delightful work, Paul resumed:

"Do you know, Miss. Juno, this anti-climax strikes me as being exceedingly funny? When I met you the other day, I felt as if I'd met my fate. I know well enough that I'd felt that way often before, and promptly recovered from the attack. I certainly never felt it in the same degree until I came face to face with you. I was never quite so fairly and squarely face to face with any one before. I came here because I could not help myself. I simply had to come, and to come at once. I was resolved to propose to you and to marry you without a cent, if you'd let me. I didn't expect that you'd let me, but I felt it my duty to find out. I'm dead sure that I was very much in love with you—and I am now; but somehow it isn't that spoony sort of love that makes a man unwholesome and sometimes drives him to drink or to suicide. I suppose I love you too well to want to marry you; but God knows how glad I am that we have met, and I hope that we shall never really part again."

"Paul!"—Miss. Juno's rather too pallid cheeks were slightly tinged with rose; she seemed more than ever to belong to that fair garden, to have become a part of it, in fact;—"Paul," said she, earnestly enough, "you're an awfully good fellow, and I like you so much; I shall always like you; but if you had been fool enough to propose to me I should have despised you. Shake!" And she extended a most shapely hand that clasped his warmly and firmly. While he still held it without restraint, he added:

"Why I like you so much is because you are unlike other girls; that is to say, you're perfectly natural."

"Most people who think me unlike other girls, think me unnatural for that reason. It is hard to be natural, isn't it?"

"Why, no, I think it is the easiest thing in the world to be natural. I'm as natural as I can be, or as anybody can be."

"And yet I've heard you pronounced a bundle of affectations."

"I know that—it's been said in my hearing, but I don't care in the least; it is natural for the perfectly natural person not to care in the least."

"I think, perhaps, it is easier for boys to be natural, than for girls," said Miss. Juno.

"Yes, boys are naturally more natural," replied Paul with much confidence.

Miss. Juno smiled an amused smile.

Paul resumed—"I hardly ever knew a girl who didn't wish herself a boy. Did you ever see a boy who wanted to be a girl?"

"I've seen some who ought to have been girls—and who would have made very droll girls. I know an old gentleman who used to bewail the degeneracy of the age and exclaim in despair, 'Boys will be girls!'" laughed Miss. Juno.

"Horrible thought! But why is it that girlish boys are so unpleasant while tom-boys are delightful?"

"I don't know," replied she, "unless the girlish boy has lost the charm of his sex, that is manliness; and the tom-boy has lost the defect of hers—a kind of selfish dependence."

"I'm sure the girls like you, don't they?'' he added.

"Not always; and there are lots of girls I can't endure!"

"I've noticed that women who are most admired by women are seldom popular with men; and that the women the men go wild over are little appreciated by their own sex," said Paul.

"Yes, I've noticed that; as for myself my best friends are masculine; but when I was away at boarding-school my chum, who was immensely popular, used to call me Jack!"

"How awfully jolly; may I call you 'Jack' and will you be my chum?"

"Of course I will; but what idiots the world would think us."

"Who cares?" cried he defiantly. "There are millions of fellows this very moment who would give their all for such a pal as you are—Jack!"

There was a fluttering among the butterflies; the artists had risen and were standing waist-deep in the garden of gracious things; they were coming to Paul and Miss. Juno, and in amusing pantomime announcing that pangs of hunger were compelling their return to the cottage; the truth is, it was long past the lunch hour—and a large music-box which had been set in motion when the light repast was laid had failed to catch the ear with its tinkling aria.

All four of the occupants of the garden turned leisurely toward the cottage. Miss. Juno had rested her hand on Paul's shoulder and said in a delightfully confidential way: "Let it be a secret that we are chums, dear boy—the world is such an idiot."

"All right, Jack," whispered Paul, trying to hug himself in delight, 'Little secrets are cozy.'"

And in the scent of the roses it was duly embalmed.

III

Happy is the man who is without encumbrances—that that is if he knows how to be happy. Whenever Paul Clitheroe found the burden of the day becoming oppressive he cast it off, and sought solace in a change of scene. He could always, or almost always, do this at a moment's notice. It chanced, upon a certain occasion, when a little community of artists were celebrating the sale of a great picture—the masterpiece of one of their number—that word was sent to Paul to join their feast. He found the large studio where several of them worked intermittently, highly decorated; a table was spread in a manner to have awakened an appetite even upon the palate of the surfeited; there were music and dancing, and bacchanalian revels that went on and on from night to day and on to night again. It was a veritable feast of lanterns, and not until the last one had burned to the socket and the wine-vats were empty and the studio strewn with unrecognizable debris and permeated with odors stale, flat and unprofitable, did the revels cease. Paul came to dine; he remained three days; he had not yet worn out his welcome, but he had resolved, as was his wont at intervals, to withdraw from the world, and so he returned to the Eyrie,—which was ever his initial step toward the accomplishment of the longed-for end.

Not very many days later Paul received the breeziest of letters; it was one of a series of racy rhapsodies that came to him bearing the Santa Rosa postmark. They were such letters as a fellow might write to a college chum, but with no line that could have brought a blush to the cheek of modesty—not that the college chum is necessarily given to the inditing of such epistles. These letters were signed "Jack."

"Jack" wrote to say how the world was all in bloom and the rose-garden one bewildering maze of blossoms; how Mama was still embroidering from nature in the midst thereof, crowned with a wreath of butterflies and with one uncommonly large one perched upon her Psyche shoulder and fanning her cheek with its brilliantly dyed wing; how Eugene was reveling in his art, painting lovely pictures of the old Spanish Missions with shadowy outlines of the ghostly fathers, long since departed, haunting the dismantled cloisters; how the air was like the breath of heaven, and the twilight unspeakably pathetic, and they were all three constantly reminded of Italy and forever talking of Rome and the Campagna, and Venice, and imagining themselves at home again and Paul with them, for they had resolved that he was quite out of his element in California; they had sworn he must be rescued; he must return with them to Italy and that right early. He must wind up his affairs and set his house in order at once and forever; he should never go back to it again, but live a new life and a gentler life in that oldest and most gentle of lands; they simply must take him with them and seat him by the shore of the Venetian Sea, where he could enjoy his melancholy, if he must be melancholy, and find himself for the first time provided with a suitable background. This letter came to him inlaid with rose petals; they showered upon him in all their fragrance as he read the inspiring pages and, since "Jack" with quite a martial air had issued a mandate which ran as follows, "Order No. 19—Paul Clitheroe will, upon receipt of this, report immediately at headquarters at Santa Rosa," he placed the key of his outer door in his pocket and straightway departed without more ado.

***

They swung in individual hammocks, Paul and "Jack," within the rose-screened veranda. The conjugal affinities, Violet and Eugene, were lost to the world in the depths of the rose-garden beyond sight and hearing.

Said Jack, resuming a rambling conversation which had been interrupted by the noisy passage of a bee, "That particular bee reminds me of some people who fret over their work, and who make others who are seeking rest, extremely uncomfortable."

Paul was thoughtful for a few moments and then remarked: "And yet it is a pleasant work he is engaged in, and his days are passed in the fairest fields; he evidently enjoys his trade even if he does seem to bustle about it. I can excuse the buzz and the hum in him, when I can't always in the human tribes."

"If you knew what he was saying just now, perhaps you'd find him as disagreeable as the man who is condemned to earn his bread in the sweat of his brow, and makes more or less of a row about it."

"Very likely, Jack, but these bees are born with business instincts, and they can't enjoy loafing; they don't know how to be idle. Being as busy as a busy bee must be being very busy!"

"There is the hum of the hive in that phrase, old boy! I'm sure you've been working up to it all along. Come now, confess, you've had that in hand for some little time."

"Well, what if I have? That is what writers do, and they have to do it. How else can they make their dialogue in the least attractive? Did you ever write a story, Jack?"

"No, of course not; how perfectly absurd!"

"Not in the least absurd. You've been reading novels ever since you were born. You've the knack of the thing, the telling of a story, the developing of a plot, the final wind-up of the whole concern, right at your tongue's end."

"Paul, you're an idiot."

"Idiot, Jack? I'm nothing of the sort and I can prove what I've just been saying to you about yourself. Now, listen and don't interrupt me until I've said my say."

Paul caught hold of a branch of vine close at hand and set his hammock swinging slowly. Miss. Juno settled herself more comfortably in hers, and seemed much interested and amused.

"Now," said Paul, with a comical air of importance—"now, any one who has anything at his tongue's end, has it, or can, just as well as not, have it at his finger's end. If you can tell a story well, and you can, Jack, you know you can, you can write it just as well. You have only to tell it with your pen instead of with your lips; and if you will only write it exactly as you speak it, so long as your verbal version is a good one, your pen version is bound to be equally as good; moreover, it seems to me that in this way one is likely to adopt the most natural style, which is, of course, the best of all styles. Now what do you say to that?"

"Oh, nothing," after a little pause—"however I doubt that any one, male or female, can take up pen for the first time and tell a tale like a practised writer."

"Of course not. The practised writer has a style of his own, a conventional narrative style which may be very far from nature. People in books very seldom talk as they do in real life. When people in books begin to talk like human beings the reader thinks the dialogue either commonplace or mildly realistic, and votes it a bore."

"Then why try to write as one talks? Why not cultivate the conventional style of the practised writer?"

"Why talk commonplaces?" cried Paul a little tartly. "Of course most people must do so if they talk at all, and they are usually the people who talk all the time. But I have known people whose ordinary conversation was extraordinary, and worth putting down in a book—every word of it."

"In my experience," said Miss. Juno, "people who talk like books are a burden."

"They needn't talk like the conventional book, I tell you. Let them have something to say and say it cleverly—that is the kind of conversation to make books of."

"What if all that we've been saying here, under the rose, as it were, were printed just as we've said it?"

"What if it were? It would at least be natural, and we've been saying something of interest to each other; why should it not interest a third party?"

Miss. Juno smiled and rejoined, "I am not a confirmed eavesdropper, but I often find myself so situated that I cannot avoid overhearing what other people are saying to one another; it is seldom that, under such circumstances, I hear anything that interests me."

"Yes, but if you knew the true story of those very people, all that they may be saying in your hearing would no doubt possess an interest, inasmuch as it would serve to develop their history."

"Our conversation is growing a little thin, Paul, don't you think so? We couldn't put all this into a book."

"If it helped to give a clue to our character and our motives, we could. The thing is to be interesting: if we are interesting, in ourselves, by reason of our original charm or our unconventionality, almost anything we might say or do ought to interest others. Conventional people are never interesting."

"Yet the majority of mankind is conventional to a degree; the conventionals help to fill up; their habitual love of conventionality, or their fear of the unconventional, is what keeps them in their place. This is very fortunate. On the other hand, a world full of people too clever to be kept in their proper spheres, would be simply intolerable. But there is no danger of this!"

"Yes, you are right," said Paul after a moment's pause;—"you are interesting, and that is why I like you so well."

"You mean that I am unconventional?"

"Exactly. And, as I said before, that is why I'm so awfully fond of you. By Jove, I'm so glad I'm not in love with you, Jack."

"So am I, old boy; I couldn't put up with that at all; you'd have to go by the next train, you know; you would, really. And yet, if we are to write a novel apiece we shall be obliged to put love into it; love with a very large L."

"No we wouldn't; I'm sure we wouldn't."

Miss. Juno shook her golden locks in doubt—Paul went on persistently:—"I'm dead sure we wouldn't; and to prove it, some day I'll write a story without its pair of lovers; everybody shall be more or less spoony—but nobody shall be really in love."

"It wouldn't be a story, Paul."

"It would be a history, or a fragment of a history, a glimpse of a life at any rate, and that is as much as we ever get of the lives of those around us. Why can't I tell you the story of one fellow—of myself for example; how one day I met this person, and the next day I met that person, and next week some one else comes on to the stage, and struts his little hour and departs. I'm not trying to give my audience, my readers, any knowledge of that other fellow. My reader must see for himself how each of those fellows in his own way has influenced me. The story is my story, a study of myself, nothing more or less. If the reader don't like me he may lay me down in my cloth or paper cover, and have nothing more to do with me. If I'm not a hero, perhaps it's not so much my fault as my misfortune. That people are interested in me, and show it in a thousand different ways, assures me that my story, not the story of those with whom I'm thrown in contact, is what interests them. It's a narrow-gauge, single-track story, but it runs through a delightful bit of country, and if my reader wants to look out of my windows and see things as I see them and find out how they influence me he is welcome; if he doesn't, he may get off at the very next station and change cars for Elsewhere."

"I shall have love in my story," said Miss. Juno, with an amusing touch of sentiment that on her lips sounded like polite comedy.

"You may have all the love you like, and appeal to the same old novel-reader who has been reading the same sort of love story for the last hundred years, and when you've finished your work and your reader has stood by you to the sweet or bitter end, no one will be any the wiser or better. You've taught nothing, you've untaught nothing——and there you are!"

"Oh! A young man with a mission! Do you propose to revolutionize?"

"No; revolutions only roil the water. You might as well try to make water flow up-hill as to really revolutionize anything. I'd beautify the banks of the stream, and round the sharp turns in it, and weed it out, and sow water-lilies, and set the white swan with her snow-flecked breast afloat. That's what I'd do!"

"That's the art of the landscape gardener; I don't clearly see how it is of benefit to the novelist, Paul! Now, honestly, is it?"

"You don't catch my meaning, Jack; girls are deuced dull, you know,—I mean obtuse." Miss. Juno flushed. "I wasn't referring to the novel; I was saying that instead of writing my all in a vain effort to revolutionize anything in particular, I'd try to get all the good I could out of the existing evil, and make the best of it. But let's not talk in this vein any longer; I hate argument. Argument is nothing but a logical or illogical set-to; begin it as politely as you please, it is not long before both parties throw aside their gloves and go in with naked and bloody fists; one of the two gets knocked out, but he hasn't been convinced of anything in particular; he was not in condition, that is all; better luck next time."

"Have you the tobacco, Paul?" asked Miss Juno, extending her hand. The tobacco was silently passed from one hammock to the other; each rolled a cigarette, and lit it. Paul blew a great smoke ring into the air; his companion blew a lesser one that shot rapidly after the larger halo, and the two were speedily blended in a pretty vapor wraith.

"That's the ghost of an argument, Jack," said Paul, glancing above. He resumed: "What I was about to say when I was interrupted"—this was his pet joke; he knew well enough that he had been monopolizing the conversation of the morning—"what I was about to say was this: my novel shall be full of love, but you won't know that it is love—I mean the every-day love of the every-day people. In my book everybody is going to love everybody else—or almost everybody else; if there is any sort of a misunderstanding it sha'n't matter much. I hate rows; I believe in the truest and the fondest fellowship. What is true love? It is bosom friendship; that is the purest passion of love. It is the only love that lasts."

There was a silence for the space of some minutes; Paul and Miss. Juno were quietly, dreamily smoking. Without, among the roses, there was the boom of bees; the carol of birds, the flutter of balancing butterflies. Nature was very soothing, she was in one of her sweetest moods. The two friends were growing drowsy. Miss. Juno, if she at times betrayed a feminine fondness for argument, was certainly in no haste to provoke Paul to a further discussion of the quality of love or friendship; presently she began rather languidly:

"You were saying I ought to write, and that you believe I can, if I will only try. I'm going to try; I've been thinking of something that happened within my knowledge; perhaps I can make a magazine sketch of it."

"Oh, please write it, Jack! Write it, and send the manuscript to me, that I may place it for you; will you? Promise me you will!" The boy was quite enthusiastic, and his undisguised pleasure in the prospect of seeing something from the pen of his pal—as he loved to call Miss. Juno—seemed to awaken a responsive echo in her heart.

"I will, Paul; I promise you!"—and the two struck hands on it.

IV

When Paul returned to the Eyrie, it had been decided that Miss. Juno was to at once begin her first contribution to periodic literature. She had found her plot; she had only to tell her story in her own way, just as if she were recounting it to Paul. Indeed, at his suggestion, she had promised to sit with pen in hand and address him as if he were actually present. In this way he hoped she would drop into the narrative style natural to her, and so attractive to her listeners.

As for Paul Clitheroe, he was to make inquiry among his editorial friends in the Misty City, and see if he might not effect some satisfactory arrangement with one or another of them, whereby he would be placed in a position enabling him to go abroad in the course of a few weeks, and remain abroad indefinitely. He would make Venice his headquarters; he would have the constant society of his friends; the fellowship of Jack; together, after the joint literary labors of the day, they would stem the sluggish tide of the darksome canals and exchange sentiment and cigarette smoke in mutual delight. Paul was to write a weekly or a semi-monthly letter to the journal employing him as a special correspondent. At intervals, in the company of his friends, or alone, he would set forth upon one of those charming excursions so fruitful of picturesque experience, and return to his lodgings on the Schiavoni, to work them up into magazine articles; these would later, of course, get into book form; from the book would come increased reputation, a larger source of revenue, and the contentment of success which he so longed for, so often thought he had found, and so seldom enjoyed for any length of time.

All this was to be arranged,—or rather the means to which all this was the delightful end—was to be settled as soon as possible. Miss. Juno, having finished her story, was to send word to Paul and he was to hie him to the Rose Garden; thereafter at an ideal dinner, elaborated in honor of the occasion, Eugene was to read the maiden effort, while the author, sustained by the sympathetic presence of her admiring Mama and her devoted Paul, awaited the verdict.

This was to be the test—a trying one for Miss Juno. As for Paul, he felt quite patriarchal, and yet, so genuine and so deep was his interest in the future of his protÉgÉe, that he was already showing symptoms of anxiety.

The article having been sent to the editor of the first magazine in the land, the family would be ready to fold its Æsthetic tent and depart; Paul, of course, accompanying them.

It was a happy thought; visions of Venice; the moonlit lagoon; the reflected lamps plunging their tongues of flame into the sea; the humid air, the almost breathless silence, broken at intervals by the baying of deep-mouthed bells; the splash of oars; the soft tripping measure of human voices and the refrain of the gondoliers; Jack by his side—Jack now in her element, with the maroon fez of the distinguished howadji tilted upon the back of her handsome head, her shapely finger-nails stained with henna, her wrists weighed down with their scores of tinkling bangles! Could anything be jollier?

Paul gave himself up to the full enjoyment of this dream. Already he seemed to have overcome every obstacle, and to be reveling in the subdued but sensuous joys of the Adriatic queen. Sometimes he had fled in spirit to the sweet seclusion of the cloistral life at San Lazaro. Byron did it before him;—the plump, the soft-voiced, mild-visaged little Arminians will tell you all about that, and take immense pleasure in the telling of it. Paul had also known a fellow-writer who had emulated Byron, and had even distanced the Byron record in one respect at least—he had outstayed his lordship at San Lazaro!

Sometimes Paul turned hermit, in imagination and dwelt alone upon the long sands of the melancholy Lido; not seeing Jack, or anybody, save the waiter at the neighboring restaurant, for days and days together. It was immensely diverting, this dream-life that Paul led in far distant Venice. It was just the life he loved, the ideal life, and it wasn't costing him a cent—no, not a soldo, to speak more in the Venetian manner.

While he was looking forward to the life to come, he had hardly time to perfect his arrangements for a realization of it. He was to pack everything and store it in a bonded warehouse, where it should remain until he had taken root abroad. Then he would send for it and settle in the spot he loved best of all, and there write and dream and drink the wine of the country, while the Angelus bells ringing thrice a day awoke him to a realizing sense of the fairy-like flight of time just as they have been doing for ages past, and, let us hope, as they will continue to do forever and forever.

One day he stopped dreaming of Italy, and resolved to secure his engagement as a correspondent. Miss. Juno had written him that her sketch was nearly finished; that he must hold himself in readiness to answer her summons at a moment's notice. The season was advancing; no time was to be lost, etc. Paul started at once for the office of his favorite journal; his interview was not entirely satisfactory. Editors, one and all, as he called upon them in succession, didn't seem especially anxious to send the young man abroad for an indefinite period; the salary requested seemed exorbitant. They each made a proposition; all said: "This is the best I can do at present; go to the other offices, and if you receive a better offer we advise you to take it." This seemed reasonable enough, but as their best rate was fifteen dollars for one letter a week he feared that even the highly respectable second-class accommodations of all sorts to which he must confine himself would be beyond his means.

Was he losing interest in the scheme which had afforded him so many hours of sweet, if not solid, satisfaction? No, not exactly. Poverty was more picturesque abroad than in his prosaic native land. His song was not quite so joyous, that was all; he would go to Italy; he would take a smaller room; he would eat at the Trattoria of the people; he would make studies of the peasant, the contadini. Jack had written, "There is pie in Venice when we are there; Mama knows how to make pie; pie cannot be purchased elsewhere. Love is the price thereof!" And pie is very filling. Yes, he would go to Europe on fifteen dollars per week and find paradise in the bright particular Venetian Pie!

V

After many days a great change came to pass. Everybody knew that Paul Clitheroe had disappeared without so much as a "good-by" to his most intimate friends. Curiosity was excited for a little while, but for a little while only. Soon he was forgotten, or remembered by no one save those who had known and loved him and who at intervals regretted him.

And Miss. Juno? Ah, Miss. Juno, the joy of Paul's young dreams! Having been launched successfully at his hands, and hoping in her brave, off-hand way to be of service to him, she continued to write as much for his sake as for her own; she knew it would please him beyond compare were she to achieve a pronounced literary success. He had urged her to write a novel. She had lightly laughed him to scorn—and had kept turning in her mind the possible plot for a tale. One day it suddenly took shape; the whole thing seemed to her perfectly plain sailing; if Clitheroe had launched her upon that venturesome sea, she had suddenly found herself equipped and able to sail without the aid of any one.

She had written to Paul of her joy in this new discovery. Before her loomed the misty outlines of fair far islands; she was about to set forth to people these. Oh, the joy of that! The unspeakable joy of it! She spread all sail on this voyage of discovery—she asked for nothing more save the prayers of her old comrade. She longed to have him near her so that together they might discuss the situations in her story, one after another. If he were only in Venice they would meet daily over their dinner, and after dinner she would read to him what she had written since they last met; then they would go in a gondola for a moonlight cruise; of course it was always moonlight in Venice! Would this not be delightful and just as an all-wise Providence meant it should be? Paul had read something like this in the letters which she used to write him when he was divided against himself; when he began to feel himself sinking, without a hand to help him. Venice was out of the question then; it were vain for him to even dream of it.

So time went on; Miss. Juno became a slave of the lamp; her work grew marvelously under her pen. Her little people led her a merry chase; they whispered in her ears night and day; she got no rest of them—but rose again and again to put down the clever things they said, and so, almost before she knew it, her novel had grown into three fine English volumes with inch-broad margins, half-inch spacings, large type and heavy paper. She was amazed to find how important her work had become.

Fortune favored her. She found a publisher who was ready to bring out her book at once; two sets of proofs were forwarded to her; these she corrected with deep delight, returning one to her London publisher and sending one to America, where another publisher was ready to issue the work simultaneously with the English print.

It made its appearance under a pen-name in England—anonymously in America. What curiosity it awakened may be judged by the instantaneous success of the work in both countries: Tauchnitz at once added it to his fascinating list; the French and German translators negotiated for the right to run it as a serial in Paris and Berlin journals. Considerable curiosity was awakened concerning the identity of the authorship, and the personal paragraphers made a thousand conjectures, all of which helped the sale of the novel immensely and amused Miss. Juno and her confidants beyond expression.

All this was known to Clitheroe before he had reached the climax that forced him to the wall. He had written to Miss. Juno; and he had called her "Jack" as of old, but he felt and she realized that he felt that the conditions were changed. The atmosphere of the rose-garden was gone forever; the hopes and aspirations that were so easy and so airy then, had folded their wings like bruised butterflies or faded like the flowers. She resolved to wait until he had recovered his senses and then perhaps he would come to Venice and to them—which in her estimation amounted to one and the same thing.

She wrote to him no more; he had not written her for weeks, save only the few lines of congratulation on the success of her novel, and to thank her for the author's copy she had sent him: the three-volume London edition with a fond inscription on the flyleaf—a line in each volume. This was the end of all that.

Once more she wrote, but not to Clitheroe; she wrote to a friend she had known when she was in the far West, one who knew Paul well and was always eager for news of him.

The letter, or a part of it, ran as follows:

"Of course such weather as this is not to be shut out-of-doors; we feed on it; we drink it in; we bathe in it, body and soul. Ah, my friend, know a June in Venice before you die! Don't dare to die until you have become saturated with the aerial-aquatic beauty of this Divine Sea-City!

"Oh, I was about to tell you something when the charms of this Syren made me half-delirious and of course I forgot all else in life—I always do so. Well, as we leave in a few days for the delectable Dolonites, we are making our rounds of P. P. C.'s,—that we are revisiting every nook and corner in the lagoon so dear to us. We invariably do this; it is the most delicious leave-taking imaginable. If I were only Niobe I'd water these shores with tears—I'm sure I would; but you know I never weep; I never did; I don't know how; there is not a drop of brine in my whole composition.

"Dear me! how I do rattle on—but you know my moods and will make due allowance for what might strike the cold, unfeeling world as being garrulity.

"We had resolved to visit that most enchanting of all Italian shrines, San Francisco del Deserto. We had not been there for an age; you know it is rather a long pull over, and one waits for the most perfect hour when one ventures upon the outskirts of the lagoon.

"Oh, the unspeakable loveliness of that perfect day! The mellowing haze that veiled the water; the heavenly blue of the sea, a mirror of the sky, and floating in between the two, so that one could not be quite sure whether it slumbered in the lap of the sea or hung upon the bosom of the sky, that ideal summer island—San Francisco del Deserto.

"You know it is only a few acres in extent—not more than six, I fancy, and four-fifths of it are walled about with walls that stand knee-deep in sea-grasses. Along, and above it, are thrust the tapering tops of those highly decorative cypresses without which Italy would not be herself at all. There is such a monastery there—an ideal one, with cloister, and sundial, and marble-curbed well, and all that; at least so I am told; we poor feminine creatures are not permitted to cross the thresholds of these Holy Houses. This reminds me of a remark I heard made by a very clever woman who wished to have a glimpse of the interior of that impossible Monte Casino on the mountain top between Rome and Naples. Of course she was refused admission; she turned upon the poor Benedictine, who was only obeying orders—it is a rule of the house, you know—and said, 'Why do you refuse me admission to this shrine? Is it because I am of the same sex as the mother of your God?' But she didn't get in for all that. Neither have I crossed the threshold of San Francisco del Deserto, but I have wandered upon the green in front of the little chapel; and sat under the trees in contemplation of the sea and wished—yes, really and truly wished—that I were a barefooted Franciscan friar with nothing to do but look picturesque in such a terrestrial paradise.

"What do you think happened when we were there the other day? Now at last I am coming to it. We were all upon the Campo in front of the chapel—Violet, Eugene and I; the Angelus had just rung; it was the hour of all hours in one's lifetime; the deepening twilight—we had the moon to light us on our homeward way—the inexpressible loveliness of the atmosphere, the unutterable peace, the unspeakable serenity—the repose in nature—I cannot begin to express myself!

"Out of the chapel came the Father Superior. He knows us very well, for we have often visited the island; he always offers us some refreshment, a cup of mass wine, or a dish of fruit, and so he did on this occasion. We were in no hurry to leave the shore and so accepted his invitation to be seated under the trees while he ordered the repast.

"Presently he returned and was shortly followed by a young friar whom we had never seen before; there are not many of them there—a dozen perhaps—and their faces are more or less familiar to us, for even we poor women may kneel without the gratings in their little chapel, and so we have learned to know the faces we have seen there in the choir. But this one was quite new to us and so striking; his eyes were ever raised; he offered us a dish of bread and olives, while the abbot poured our wine, and the very moment we had served ourselves he quietly withdrew.

"I could think of but one thing—indeed we all thought of it at the same moment—'tis Browning's—

"You know the lines well enough. Why did we think of it?—because we were all startled, so startled that the abbot who usually sees us to our gondola, made his abrupt adieus, on some slight pretext, and the door of the monastery was bolted fast.

"Oh, me! How long it takes to tell a little tale—to be sure! We knew that face, the face of the young friar; we knew the hand—it was unmistakable; we have all agreed upon it and are ready to swear to it on our oaths! That novice was none other than Paul Clitheroe!"

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