The Blower of Bubbles Part 37

She said nothing; but, oh, what eloquence sometimes lies in a woman's silence! Then did Captain Craighouse of New York say many things which would look absurd in the cold medium of print, but which sounded like sweet music to his companion on that moonlight August night. He likened her to a motif that remained in his life as a melody that haunts the memory. He told her he would scale the heights of fame to cast its laurels at her feet.

"You stupid boy," she laughed caressingly; "as if anything you could ever do would be finer than just this--that you are fighting for your country!"

In some mysterious way his hands reached her shoulders; and in an equally inexplicable manner she was suddenly in his arms, and her hot cheek was against his.

"Lawrence dear," she murmured, "Galatea only knew one thing about Pygmalion--that he had brought her into being, and so she loved him.

That was all."

And the moon, feeling that her evening had been a complete success, disappeared behind a cloud, and stayed there.

XIII

A raw wind from the sea swept against the mammoth building of the _New York Monthly Journal_. The editor of that famous publication crossed to the rattling window and looked at Broadway, far beneath. A few drops of rain mingled with the dust that eddied about in little whirlpools of wind.

In his hand he held a long letter from Craighouse, and, after a pause, he re-read the ending.

... "And so I crept downstairs in the early morning and built a fire of my articles, in a grate. I am sorry to have failed you; but, if one would ridicule England, first let him go to the sea and watch the men that go out in ships--and the men that never come back from the sea. If he would scoff at the simple folk of England, first let him stop at a farm I saw, where an old man of seventy is toiling in the fields, that the King's horses and men may be fed; while his four sons sleep in France. If he would laugh at the old families of England, let him come to the old homes where every son went without a murmur, and where, too often, the last one fell beside his brothers, because England had called for men.

"If he would make the mothers of England a study for satire, first he should mock the woman at the foot of the Cross, for her love and their love, her grief and their grief, are one."

Like gnomes, the people on Broadway hurried on in an endless, diverging torrent of humanity.

THE END