“Awright. Why don’t you get the cook-book and set in the hammock a spell?” The girl laughed: “Don’t you like mother’s cooking?” “S’all right for _me_. But I don’t cal’late your mother’s going to cook for the fella you hitch up with.” Eris turned up her nose: “Don’t worry. I shan’t ever marry. Not any boy in _this_ town, anyway. Probably I’ll never marry.... I’ll not have time,” she added, half to herself. Odell, who was going, stopped. “Why not?” he demanded. “An actress ought not to marry. She ought to give every moment to her art,” explained the girl naïvely. “Is--that--so? Well, you can chase that idea outa your head, my girl, because you ain’t never going to be no actress. And that’s _that_!” “Some day,” said Eris, with a flushed smile, “I shall follow my own judgment and give myself to art.... And that’s _that_!” As they stood there, father and daughter, confronting each other in the pale April sunshine, the great herd-bull bellowed from the cattle-barn, shaking the still air with his thunderous reverberations. He was to be shot that evening. Eris sighed: “He misses his companions,” she said, “and he tells us so.... Poor White Lightning.... And I, also, miss the companionship of all I have never known.... Some day I shall tell you so.... I hope you’ll understand.” “You talk like a piece in a magazine,” said Odell; “you better quit reading them danged love stories and movin’ pitcher magazines and study into the _Farm Journal_.” “You’d be very proud of me if I became a great actress,” she said seriously. “I’d be a danged sight prouder if you was a great cook,” he grunted. And he went toward the cattle-barn, spinning the patent self-piercing nose ring on his horny forefinger. Eris called after him: “Have you _got_ to shoot Lightning?” “Yes, I gotta beef him. He’s no good any more.” * * * * * So the great herd-bull, like all “Former Things,” was doomed to “pass away.” As the Dionysia became the Mithraic Rites, so was taurian glory doomed to pass.... A bullet where Aldebaran shows the way. The way of all bulls. Neither Odell nor Eris had ever heard of Aldebaran. And the tombs of the Magi were no more tightly sealed than the mind of the father. But the child’s mind hid a little lamp unlighted. A whisper might reveal to her Aldebaran shining in the midnight heavens. Or the Keys of Life and Death hanging on the Rosy Cross.... * * * * * The bull died at the appointed hour. Eris stood in her bed-room closing both ears with trembling palms. She did not hear the shot. Mazie found her there; laughed at her good-naturedly. Eris’ lips formed the words: “Is he dead?” “My dear, he’s Polack beef by now.” Gloria tauri--gloria mundi. But whatever ends always begins again. * * * * * What was the Dionysia is now Rosicrucian ... and shall again be something else ... and always the same.