Motionless, with the burning memory of his hot lips upon her cheek, she stood until the sound of his footsteps was lost in the song of the chute. Slowly her hands dropped to her side and she sank into the chair by the table. The cat looked up from the task of licking his paws, and sprang upon her lap. "Louis!" she cried, smothering him in an embrace that threatened to snuff out his nine lives prematurely, while tears from her eyes fell glistening on his fur. "Louis!" MR. CRAIGHOUSE OF NEW YORK, SATIRIST I A raw wind from the sea swept against the mammoth building of the _New York Monthly Journal_. The editor of that classic publication stretched his arms lazily, then crossed to the rattling window and looked at Broadway, far beneath. A few belated flakes of snow mingled with the dust that eddied about in little whirlpools of wind. Like gnomes, the people hurried on in an endless diverging torrent of humanity, slouch-hats of soldiers adding a strangely Western effect to the usual bizarre scene. The telephone rang, and the editor, Mr. E. H. Townsend, left the window to answer it. "Yes?" he said. "Mr. Craighouse? Send him right in." He took from a drawer a box of notoriously expensive cigars, and laid it on his desk. The reasonings of Dr. Watson himself could hardly have failed to deduce that the visitor was of some importance. A moment later a young man, in the uniform of a United States officer, knocked, and, in response to the invitation, entered the inner temple. Mr. Townsend offered him the arm-chair, and reached for the cigars. "You look well in uniform," he said, after appropriate comments on the April weather had been made by both. "Thanks. I received your note this morning asking me to call." "Ah yes. By-the-by, you are sailing soon, I believe?" "Any time, now; naturally, we don't know to a day." "What branch of the Service are you with?" "The Engineers." The editor thrust his hands into his pockets. "That is odd," he said. "Did you know anything about engineering?" "A little." The young man's voice was abrupt, but not unmusical. His brain had always been alert, and army training was making his voice so. "I was a science grad. at Harvard." The editor gazed out of the window again. "You are a remarkable combination, Mr. Craighouse," he said. "There is nothing more stifling to the artistic nature than a purely scientific training; in fact, the influence of this journal has always been used against absolutely technical schools. Almost the first requisite of any artist is a keen appreciation of the intangible; science deals only with things that can be proved. I often nurse along a young writer if he is incoherent because, as frequently happens, his temperament is greater than his technique. Scientists always marshal their facts well, but they never soar to the heights."