"What is it, dear?" Her voice broke, husky with fright and pity. "Tell me--what is the matter? Won't it come right tonight?" With shaking hands she leaned over him, smoothing the shining hair. At the touch of her fingers he looked up, staring with pleading uncertainty into her quivering face before he shook his head. "It--it don't smile," he complained querulously. His fingers groped lightly over the small face of clay. "I--I can't make it smile--like the rest." Sudden terror contorted the thin features, a sheer ecstacy of terror as white-lipped as that which marred the face of the girl who bent above him. "Maybe I've forgotten how she smiled!" he whispered fearfully. "Maybe I'll never be able to----" Dryad's eyes flitted desperately around the room, along the shelves laden with those countless figures--all white and finely slender, all upturned of face. Again a little impotent gasp choked her; then, eyes filling hotly at that poignantly wistful smile which edged the lips of each, she stooped and patted reassuringly the trembling hands before she stepped a pace away from him. "You've not forgotten, dear. Why, you mustn't be frightened like that! We know, you and I, don't we, that you never could forget? You're just tired. Now, that's better--that's brave! And now--look! Isn't this the way--isn't this the way it ought to be?" Face uptilted, bloodless lips falling apart in the faintest of pallid smiles, she swayed forward, both arms outstretched toward him. And as she stood the wide eyes and straight nose and delicately pointed chin of her colorless face took line for line the lines of all those, chalky white, against the wall. For a moment John Anderson's eyes clung to her--clung vacant with hopeless doubt; then they glowed again with dawning recollection. He, too, was smiling once more as his fingers fluttered in nervous haste above the lips of the clay face on the bench before him, and almost before the girl had stepped back beside him he had forgotten that she was there. "Marie!" she heard him murmur. "Marie, why, you mustn't be afraid! We'll never forget--you and I--we never could forget!" Even while she waited another instant those plastic earthen lips began to curl--they began to curve with hungry longing like all the rest. He was talking steadily now, mumbling broken fragments of sentences which it was hard to understand. Her hand hovered a moment longer over his bowed head; once at the door she paused and looked back at him. "It's only for a little while," she promised unsteadily. "I--I have to go--but it's only for a little while. I'll be back soon--so soon! And you'll be safe until I come!" He gave no sign that he had heard, not even so much as a lifted glance. But as she drew the door shut behind her she heard him pick up the words, caressingly, after her.