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 truth he had recently discovered: that talent is largely a matter of knowing how to apply your gift.

He had asked her about Hellgren, and she had shrugged her shoulders.

"I haven't seen him for ages. They say he's turned into a perfect anchorite. Oh, I must show you the picture of my wop lover," and Mamie searched through her photographs for the portrait of the baritone who had sung Athanaël to her Thaïs.

"You do like 'em fat!" was Grover's comment.

She snatched the photograph away from him and told him he had no soul.

"I wish to heck I hadn't," said Grover.

Two babes in the woods of Europe, he reflected, pathetic products of Idaho and Massachusetts craving the fulfillment of a romantic hunger for a nectar and ambrosia that don't exist this side of Olympus, staying, the pangs with pretty poor substitutes—his doxy at Rapallo, Mamie's greasy monk. And even at that, Mamie was probably maligning the man.

He had been nearly a year in his position, as he realized one morning when he came into the office to find a fire lighted in the grate, the first inescapable proof of autumn. Though he had been entrusted with more interesting responsibilities, there was still a good deal of proof-reading to be done and he was settling