The students and the master had drifted away. Cedersholm was in the midst of his friends. Fairfax would not have put out his hand to take his laurel. His spirit and soul had gone into communion with a greater sculptor of the Sphinx, the unknown Egyptian. Standing apart from the crowd where Cedersholm was being congratulated, Fairfax remarked the lady again, and that she stood alone as was he. She seemed pensive, turning her lace parasol between her hands, her eyes on the ground. The young man supposed her to be dreaming of her lover's greatness. He recalled the day, two years ago, when with Bella and Gardiner he had come up before the opening in the earth prepared for the pedestal. "Wait, wait, my hearties!" he had said. Well, one of them had gone on, impatient, to the unveiling of greater wonders, and Antony had come to his unclaimed festival alone.... CHAPTER XXVI He said to Rainsford at luncheon, over nuts and raisins, and coffee as black as George Washington's smiling face-- "I reckon you think I've got a heart of cotton, don't you? I reckon you think I don't come up to the scratch, do you, old man? I assure you that I went down to New York seeing scarlet. I had made my plans. Afterward, mind you, Rainsford, not of course before a whole lot of people,--but in his own studio, I intended to tell Cedersholm a few truths. Upon my honour, I believe I _could_ have killed him." Rainsford held a pecan nut between the crackers which he pressed slowly as he listened to his friend. Antony's big hand was spread out on the table; its grip would have been powerful on a man's throat. "We often get rid of our furies on the way," said Rainsford, slowly. "We keep them housed so long that they fly away unobserved at length. And when at last we open the door, and expect to find them ready with their poisons, they've gone, vanished every one." "Not in this case," Fairfax shook his head. "I shall call on them all some day and they will all answer me. But yesterday wasn't the time. You'll think me poorer-spirited than ever, I daresay, but the woman he is going to marry was there, a pretty woman, and she seemed to love him." Fairfax glanced up at the agent and saw only comprehension. "Quite right, Tony." Rainsford returned Fairfax's look over his glistening eyeglasses, cracked the pecan nut and took out the meat. "I am not surprised." Antony, who had taken a clipping from his wallet, held it out. "Read this. I cut it out a week ago. Yesterday in the Central Park old ambitions struck me hard. Read it." The notice was from a Western paper, and spoke in detail of a competition offered to American sculptors by the State of California, for the design in plaster of a tomb. The finished work was to be placed in the great new cemetery in Southern California. The prize to be awarded was ten thousand dollars and the time for handing in the design a year. "Not a very cheerful or inspiring subject, Tony."