Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/140

 a-going. I could stand a lot more of that,—or perhaps I couldn't!"

"Why, Joe, what's gone wrong?"

"I suppose you know that your young friend got up a great to-do for us the other evening?"

"Yes; I've heard something about it." He looked at Foster's drawn face, and heard with surprise the rasping note in his voice. "Was it as bad as that?" Foster drew his shade down farther over his eyes and clashed his needles together.

"I remember how, when I was in Florence, we went out to a religious festival one evening at some small hill-town near by. This was twenty years ago, when I could travel. There was a kind of grotto in the church, under the high altar; and in the grotto was a full-sized figure of a dead man, carved and painted—and covered with wounds; and round that figure half the women and girls of the town were collected, stroking, kissing Adonis all over again!"

"Oh, come, Joe; don't get morbid."

Foster lifted one shoulder.

"Well, the young fellow began by roaring through the house like a bull of Bashan, and he ended by toppling over like a little wobbly calf."

He spoke like a man who had imaged a full measure of physical powers and had envied them had been exasperated by the exuberant presentation of them had felt a series of contradictory emotions when they had seemed to fail

"It was only a moment of dizziness," said Randolph. "I imagine he was fairly himself next day."