Hedger went slowly up the stairs—­never had they seemed so long, or his legs so heavy.  The upper floor was emptiness and silence.  He unlocked his room, lit the gas, and opened the windows.  When he went to put his coat in the closet, he found, hanging among his clothes, a pale, flesh-tinted dressing gown he had liked to see her wear, with a perfume—­oh, a perfume that was still Eden Bower!  He shut the door behind him and there, in the dark, for a moment he lost his manliness.  It was when he held this garment to him that he found a letter in the pocket.

The note was written with a lead pencil, in haste:  She was sorry that he was angry, but she still didn’t know just what she had done.  She had thought Mr. Ives would be useful to him; she guessed he was too proud.  She wanted awfully to see him again, but Fate came knocking at her door after he had left her.  She believed in Fate.  She would never forget him, and she knew he would become the greatest painter in the world.  Now she must pack.  She hoped he wouldn’t mind her leaving the dressing gown; somehow, she could never wear it again.

After Hedger read this, standing under the gas, he went back into the closet and knelt down before the wall; the knot hole had been plugged up with a ball of wet paper,—­the same blue note-paper on which her letter was written.

He was hard hit.  Tonight he had to bear the loneliness of a whole lifetime.  Knowing himself so well, he could hardly believe that such a thing had ever happened to him, that such a woman had lain happy and contented in his arms.  And now it was over.  He turned out the light and sat down on his painter’s stool before the big window.  Caesar, on the floor beside him, rested his head on his master’s knee.  We must leave Hedger thus, sitting in his tank with his dog, looking up at the stars.

* * * * *

Coming, Aphrodite!  This legend, in electric lights over the Lexington Opera House, had long announced the return of Eden Bower to New York after years of spectacular success in Paris.  She came at last, under the management of an American Opera Company, but bringing her own chef d’orchestre.

One bright December afternoon Eden Bower was going down Fifth Avenue in her car, on the way to her broker, in Williams Street.  Her thoughts were entirely upon stocks,—­Cerro de Pasco, and how much she should buy of it,—­when she suddenly looked up and realized that she was skirting Washington Square.  She had not seen the place since she rolled out of it in an old-fashioned four-wheeler to seek her fortune, eighteen years ago.

“Arretez, Alphonse.  Attendez moi,” she called, and opened the door before he could reach it.  The children who were streaking over the asphalt on roller skates saw a lady in a long fur coat, and short, high-heeled shoes, alight from a French car and pace slowly about the Square, holding her muff to her chin.  This spot, at least, had changed very little, she reflected; the same trees, the same fountain, the white arch, and over yonder, Garibaldi, drawing the sword for freedom.  There, just opposite her, was the old red brick house.