“At all events,” Kathleen considered, “it is a quarter to seven already, and we have seats for the theater to-night.”
He cleared his throat. “Shall I keep this, or you?”
“Why, for heaven’s sake—! The thing is of no value now, Felix. Give it to me.” She dropped the two pieces of metal into the wastebasket by the dressing-table, and rose impatiently. “Of course if you don’t mean to change for dinner—”
He shrugged and gave it up.
So they dined alone together, sharing a taciturn meal, and duly witnessed the drolleries of The Gutta-Percha Girl. Kennaston’s sleep afterward was sound and dreamless.
IV
Past Storisende Fares the Road of Use and Wont
HE read The Tinctured Veil in print, with curious wistful wonder. “How did I come to write it?” was his thought.
Thereafter Felix Kennaston, as the world knows, wrote no more books, save to collect his later verses into a volume. “I am afraid to write against the author of The Tinctured Veil,” he was wont flippantly to declare. And a few of us suspected even then that he spoke the absolute truth.