"To whom?"
"Well, to the two here, for instance," and he pointed to a pair of handsome lovers playing golf all over a double page in the advertising section of his magazine. "Do you mean to say these two ever know what ugliness is, or pain, or want? Or ever grow old? Or cease to love? Here is the perfect life for you."
"Are you so sure of that?" said some one over my shoulder, and I turned about sharply to look into the most entrancing face I have ever beheld in man or woman. It was Apollo standing there above me, or if not he, at least one of the divine youths that the Greeks have left for us in undying marble. He made Scipione's grimy cellar luminous with beauty.
"I beg your pardon for intruding," he said, seating himself at our table as joyously confident and as simple as an immortal should be. "But I feel myself competent to speak on the point you have raised because the Advertising Supplement you refer to is my own home. This very young man playing golf is, as you will observe, no other than myself."
There was no denying the amazing resemblance.
"You say the Advertising Supplement is your home," I collected myself sufficiently to ask, "but just how do you mean that?"
"Literally," he replied. "My whole life, and for that matter my parents' life before me, has been spent in the pages you are now fingering. My name is Pinckney, Walter Pinckney, and if you are sufficiently interested in my career I should be glad to describe it."
"Go ahead," cried Harding, with almost ferocious earnestness.
"If I begin a bit back before my birth," said Pinckney, "you will be patient with me. I will not detain you very long."
"Begin where you please," said Harding in the same grim manner; "only begin."