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 herself before the tea-kettle, "So you're on your ocean again!"

She had said it with a smile, but in a tone which vividly recalled the evenings at the Cafe International when Marthe had gently chided him for being in the moon.

"What am I to do about it?" he asked, joining her at the table, "for I suppose it's true."

"Far be it from me to make suggestions," she said. "I've learned a lot of lessons."

Though the words were ambiguous, Grover had a clear sense of their drift. The truth of the matter was that Rhoda had long since begun to take him at his word—at his five-syllable words! During the last strenuous year, acquiring the philosophy of a woman of business, she had accepted the conception of a Grover Thanet whose new maturity was bound up with the gratifications of creative accomplishment, who had repudiated New England and who was establishing his identity in the world of art. And this conception was all the more firmly planted in her mind for the fact that he had never told her that he had abjured painting, nor that he had himself been working in an office as long, or longer than she. As yet it was too early to tell her about his literary hopes, for he didn't dare tempt Providence again. Instead he wrote feverishly, in secret, while she was away from home.

The fact that he had nothing but an alien silhouette to show for his years of soul-searching was a con-