Once more Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite unintelligible.  But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his brain of action.  They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after another.  Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust that could not hide their wondrous contour.  Others hung upon the wall.  Some were fragments.  A monster group, half finished, held the center of the floor.  A ladder was beside it.

Leighton got up and strolled around.  “What’s new?” he asked.  His eyes fell on the cast of an arm, a fragment.  The arm was outstretched.  It was the arm of a woman.  So lightly had it been molded that it seemed to float.  It seemed pillowed on invisible clouds.

“Matre", said Leighton, “I want that.  How much?”

Le Brux moved over beside the cast.  As he approached it, Lewis stared at his bulk, at his hairy chest, showing at the open neck of his smock, at his great, nervous hands, and wondered if this could be the creator of so soft a dream in clay.

“Bah!  That?” said Le Brux.  “It is only a trifle.  Take it.  It is thine.”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Leighton.  “You lend me the arm, and I’ll lend you a thousand francs.”

“Done!” cried Le Brux, with a laugh that shook heaven and earth.  “Ah, rascal, thou knowest that I never pay.”

As they went the rounds of the atelier, Lewis saw that his father was growing nervous.  Finally, Leighton drew from his pocket the little kid and its two broken legs.  He held the lot out to Le Brux.  The fragments seemed to dwindle to pin-points in Le Brux’s vast hand.

“Well,” he asked, “what’s this?”

Leighton nodded toward Lewis,

“My boy made that.”

Le Brux glanced down at his hand.  A glint of interest lighted his eyes and passed.  Then a tremendous frown darkened his brow.

“A pupil, eh?  Bah!” With his thumb and forefinger he crushed the kid to powder.  “I’ll take no pupil.”

Lewis gulped in dismay at seeing his kid demolished, but not so Leighton.  He had noted the glint of interest.  He turned on Le Brux.

“You’ll take no pupil, eh?  All right, don’t.  But you’ll take my son.  You shall and you will.”

“I will not,” growled Le Brux.

“Maitre" began Leighton—­“but whom am I calling Matre?  What are you?  D’you know what you are?” He shook his finger in Le Brux’s face.  “You think you’re a creator, but you’re not.  You’re nothing but a palimpsest, the record of a single age.  What are your works but one man’s thumb-print on the face of time?  Here I am giving you a chance to be a creator, to breed a live human that will carry on the torch—­that will—­”

Le Brux had seated himself heavily on the couch.  He held his massive head between his hands and groaned.

“Ah, Letonne,” he interrupted, “our old friendship is dead—­dead by violence.  Friends have said things to me before,—­called me names,—­and I have stood it.  But none of them ever dared call me a palimpsest.  Thou hast called me a palimpsest!”