“But it didn’t take the publishers,” returned Fenton, whose face had grown unusually animated by the unexpected revival of long-buried emotions. He had put a good deal of the energy, enthusiasm, and vigor of early manhood into the rejected novel, and it had received the minute polish that his life of leisure at that time had enabled him to give it. How bitterly disappointed he had been at its refusal by a leading publishing house he had long forgotten; but the present moment had brought back to him a multitude of conflicting emotions, changed by time into a general feeling of regret and self-pity. “My writing is rather blind,” he remarked, taking the manuscript from his friend. “Let me read you the prologue; not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith.” For the first time in their acquaintanceship, Fenton’s unsymmetrical face appeared actually handsome in Richard’s eyes. The spirit of the past that lurks in the relics of by-gone years had gently spoken from the dust-stained manuscript, and had bidden John Fenton’s lost youth to gleam again in his eyes, and to add a note of enthusiasm to his voice. “It was a strangely pessimistic piece of work for a man as young as I was at that time to write,” he said musingly. “But, as I can say now, after years have strengthened my judgment, this novel is strong and artistic. At the time when it was sent to the publishers, there was little chance for the acceptance of anything written by an American that was not strictly moral and what the good old fossils of that day were so fond of calling ‘wholesome.’ This is the prologue, Richard. It gives the keynote to the story.” Fenton leaned back in his chair, and read aloud the opening words of his novel:-- “It was not a pretty fly, but it loved the sun. It rejoiced in the power of its wings, the length of its antennæ, the pulsing health of its little body. It was summer, and the fly flitted about in the warm and caressing atmosphere, as though God smiled for its especial pleasure. “Oh, the glory of the day! No shadow saw the fly, for it soared so high that nought but the golden glory of a smiling universe met its gaze. “But when the day was done, the little fly was dead. “It never knew, the joyous trifler, that it was only one of a group of neuropterous insects, belonging to the genus Ephemeræ, that live in the adult or winged state for a single day, and die when the darkness falls.” There was silence for a moment. Then Richard said:-- “I feel sure, John, that if I had picked up a novel containing that prologue my curiosity would have been piqued; that I would have been anxious to read on to see how the author had made his story harmonize with his melancholy text.”