They looked at each other in silence a moment. To disband seemed like an acknowledgment of defeat. Many another band of ardent souls has known the feeling, with its dreary ache, although it oftener happens that a circle of this kind disappears by the gradual dropping away of its numbers one by one rather than that its members are brought face to face with the necessity of owning that its existence had resulted in failure. Whatever their faults and extravagances, whatever their errors and intolerance, they were sincere, self sacrificing and ardent beyond the men who made up the world about them; a group of eager lovers of truth and art who had been drawn together by mutual aims and enthusiasms. Their fierceness had been in defense of honesty and sincerity, their disinterestedness was attested by the fact that any one of them might have made his peace with Philistia and been rewarded for his complaisance had he so chosen. Doubtless they had their faults and foibles, yet their comradeship, in its essential purport had been true and noble. They in no wise abandoned their aims in agreeing with the proposition to disband, but about their fellowship had been a certain un-phrased tenderness, at which, if put in word, any one of them might have scoffed, yet which nevertheless they all felt strongly in their secret hearts, and all were conscious that after this defection of Fenton, the circle could never be perfect again. They did not discuss the matter now, but in the interval of silence each acknowledged to himself that to disband was best; and briefly each gave his assent; all soberly, some almost gruffly. And so it came about that the goddess Pasht lost her last band of followers, and the Pagans assembled no more forever. XXXVI. AS FALSE AS STAIRS OF SAND. Merchant of Venice; v.--2. "Very likely you cannot see it," Arthur Fenton said, striking in the background of a portrait with vicious roughness. "Women and brutes differ from men in lacking reason; if you were logical you'd see." "See that you are right in selling your convictions for patronage," Helen returned gravely, ignoring the insult. "Then I am glad I am not logical." "If you choose to put it that way," he retorted doggedly, "I must still say yes." It was Friday morning, and Helen was to sail the next day. She had come to Fenton's studio to bid him good-by, knowing that they should have that to say which could not be freely spoken before Edith, and yet not choosing to have him come to her own house without his wife. "Poverty," he went on aggressively, "is nature's protest against civilization, and still more against art. I am bound to fight nature on her own ground, am I not?"