“Whether the three fishmongers lived or died,” he went on, “I don’t know. The six inches neglected to state. Want of space, possibly. You are a newspaper man, Savelle, perhaps you can explain.” “I wish you would explain this, Mr. Savelle,” said little Norvel. “What?” said Savelle. “What part of nature Mr. Philbin was imitating when he went back?” All the pent-up intensity of Savelle’s being rushed out in his answer: “I am maliciously misrepresented. There is no human element in such action. It is the divine phenomenon of Calvary.” “Savelle,” put in Philbin, “when my son was alive he was a man. I believe, too, he died like a man. I prefer that to an imitation of anything—even God.” The width of the table was between the two men, and the whole meaning of the universe. Their antagonism was irreconcilable. In that instant it had recovered all its bitterness of five years before. Time could do nothing. Not even chance could. It was literally immutable, the only thing in the world neither of those great forces can effect. But the only pitiful part of it was, Sampson sitting between them, turning now to one, now to the other, with dim sight and faulty hearing, and wanting of either merely something human. DE VILMARTE’S LUCK _By_ MARY HEATON VORSE From _Harper’s Magazine_ _Copyright, 1918, by Harper and Brothers._ _Copyright, 1919, by Mary Heaton O’Brien._ What Hazelton’s friends called his second manner had for a mother despair, and for a father irony, and for a godmother necessity. It leaped into his mind full-grown, charged with the vitality of his bitterness. Success had always been scratching at Hazelton’s door, and then hurrying past. The world had always been saying to him, “Very well, very well indeed; just a little bit better and you shall have the recognition that should be yours.” Patrons came and almost bought pictures. He was accepted only to be hung so badly that his singing color was lost on the sky-line. Critics would infuriate him by telling him that he had almost—_almost_, mind you—painted the impossible; that his painting was what they called “a little too blond.” How Hazelton hated that insincere phrase which meant nothing, for, as he explained to Dumont the critic, as they sat outside the Café de la Rotonde after their return from the _Salon_, Nature was blond—what else? He, Dumont, came from the Midi, didn’t he? Well, then, he knew what sunshine was! How could paint equal the color of a summer’s day, the sun shining on the flesh of a blond woman, a white dress against a white wall? Blond? Because he loved the vitality of light they wanted him to dip his brush in an ink-pot—_hein_? Dumont would be pleased if he harked back to the gloom of the old Dutch school, or if he imitated the massed insincerities of Boecklen, Hazelton opined from the depths of his scorn.