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348 became less kindly in her opinions of the stories and verses she was given to criticize, until this burden had decreased almost to a total nullity. As a consequence, within another year Mrs. Maecenas was hardly more than a widow with a little daughter. An occasional attack of her old weakness for genius-hunting would lure her now and then to one of the literary clubs, but she usually returned from them, with such a feeling of exhaustion and disgust that she wondered how she ever could have stood it.

Mrs. Maecenas settled down to be the voice of one whispering very quietly in the wilderness. The great machine of the university could dump its annual output of standardized "leaders of America," could ship them off every commencement day labelled "with all the advantages of a college education"; the alumni could put up a sundial or a gate, or an iron railing, every year in sacred memory of their dear Alma Mater; the great auditorium could tremble with cheering and shouting when big Dick Halloway, handsome blond-haired Dick, the hero of the university, shot the winning goal; all this could go on if it would—but Mrs. Maecenas got farther away from it all, and nearer to her books and her piano. The university became healthier, and she quietly blushed for the future of America

And then it was that her genius came. By the purest chance she had gone to the Athenian meeting. She found the room peculiarly astir. Little groups were talking quite low together, glancing now and then towards one corner of the room. In this corner, with his back turned towards the members of the Athenian, a rather gawkily formed young man was reading a yellow paper-covered volume which Mrs. Maecenas recognized to be a French novel. There was a slight smell of whiskey in the room.

Mrs. Maecenas knew she had found her genius. Yet at this time Siegfried was barely seventeen.