“You liked it?” Maurice put the question almost timidly. The landscape he loved seemed to him suddenly to lose importance, in the presence of his friend’s deep feeling. “You’ve surpassed your best self in it! I can’t tell why, but there’s something in it that assuages for me the grief of things; something of yourself that you’ve put into it, I suppose,—some beauty or solemnity that was not there, really, until you yourself brought it there, with your own two hands. Perhaps I never knew, till now, why men buy landscapes—” Saltonstall spoke dreamily. His recollective eyes, looking far beyond his listener, seemed to peer into some Paradise not wholly lost. Both men were moved. They had more to say to each other, things not to be told over egg-shells and coffee-stains. “I suppose,” hesitated Maurice, as they took their hats, “you wonder why I never painted out that figure on the back, at any rate, before I sent off the landscape?” “Oh, no,” answered the other, simply. “I know how you felt, I do, indeed! You couldn’t quite bring yourself to do it, could you, even though you tried? Neither could I, I am sure. Something keeps me from wanting to destroy it; I don’t yet know whether it’s the person or the painting! Though, of course, I never saw any picture of Amouretta that was really right, except that one little thing of yours you showed last winter in the Vanderbilt Gallery; and what’s-his-name, the man at the desk, said very emphatically it wasn’t for sale—” “No,” interrupted Maurice, “it wasn’t for sale, and never will be. It is one of the few things I couldn’t take money for! My wife and I intended to give it as a wedding-present to Amouretta. We both of us loved that child; we felt her roseleaf exquisiteness! Helen was so happy, tying up that little portrait in white paper. And afterwards,—well, I boxed it up and addressed it to you, with a note explaining it and begging you to keep it. But it was overlooked and forgotten, during my illness; and when I got up, I found I had lost my nerve about sending it to you. I feared you might not like it, or worse yet, might think I was trying to sell you something—” “Oh, Maurice Price,” sighed the collector, “then even _you_ didn’t know how much I _needed_ Amouretta, and anything that would recall her truly, just as she was, and not as those who didn’t know her imagined her to be? We Saltonstalls—” But the rest was lost in the roar of the traffic, as the men crossed the avenue, and walked rapidly together toward the Court of New Departures. It was not too late in the day to read the morning lesson to young Hal; it would do him good. After all, though, he was a plucky chap; the sooner he had whatever per cent was coming to him, the better. An amicable three-cornered arrangement could be made, about that. Certainly, where there’s a quartette of skirts, somebody must pay the piper! BITS OF CLAY