They were talking of the day of departure for the distinguished guest, and arranging for some kind of triumphal procession to escort him to White River. But he would not set the time, shrinking from this act, as if all were not yet done. There came a warm, glowing day early in September, and at night after the pipes were lighted the surgeon and the Master strolled off in the direction of the pool, arm in arm. There had been no talk that day, the surgeon apparently shrinking from coming to the last grapple with one whose faiths were so important to him as the Master's. "The flowers are dying: they tell me it's time to move on," said the surgeon. "And yet, my dear host, I go without the Secret, without understanding All!" "Perhaps there is no inner Secret," the Master smiled. "It is all here before you." "I know that--you have been very good to me, shared everything. If I have not learned the Secret, it is my fault, my incapacity. But--" and the gay tone dropped quickly and a flash of bitterness succeeded--"I at least know that there _is_ a Secret!" They sat down on the marble bench and looked into the water, each thinking his thoughts. Suddenly the surgeon began to speak, hesitantly, as if there had long been something in his mind that he was compelled to say. "My friend," he said, "I too have something to tell--the cause within the cause, the reason of the reason--at least, sometimes I think it is! The root reason for all--unhappiness, defeat, for the shaking hand and the jesting voice. And I want you to hear it--if you will." The Master raised his face from the pool but said never a word. The surgeon continued, his voice trembling at times, though he spoke slowly, evidently trying to banish all feeling. "It is a common enough story at the start, at least among men of our kind. You know that I was trained largely in Europe. My father had the means to give me the best, and time to take it in. So I was over there, before I came back to St. Jerome's, three, four years at Paris, Munich, Vienna, all about.... While I was away I lived as the others, for the most part--you know our profession--and youth. The rascals are pretty much the same to-day, I judge from what my friends say of their sons! Well, at least I worked like the devil, and was decent.... Oh, it isn't for that I'm telling the tale! I was ambitious, then. And the time came to go back, as it does in the end, and I took a few weeks' run through Italy as a final taste of the lovely European thing, and came down to Naples to get the boat for New York. I've never been back to Naples since, and that was twenty-six years ago this autumn. But I can see the city always as it was then! The seething human hive--the fellows piling in the freight to the music of their songs--the fiery mouth of Vesuvius up above. And the soft, dark night with just a plash of waves on the quay!" The Master listened, his eyes again buried in the water at their feet.