Lewis looked up and smiled.

“Only Old Immortality.  Do you remember her?  The old woman who told my fortune.  She said that.  D’you know, I think she must have been a discarded Gipsy.  I never thought of it before.  I didn’t know then what a Gipsy was.”

“Gipsy or saint, take it from me, she was, and probably is, a wise woman,” said Leighton.  “Somehow I’m still sure she can never die.  Do you remember all she said when she told you your fortune?”

“Yes,” said Lewis; “I think I do.  Every once in a while I’ve said it over to myself.”

“I wish you’d write down what she said and—­and leave it on my table for me.  You’ll have to do it tonight, for I’m off to-morrow.  Old Ivory and I have shot so much game we’ve grown squeamish about it, but it seems there’s a terrific drought and famine on in the game country of the East Coast, and all the reserves have been thrown open.  The idea is meat for the natives and a thinning out of game in the overstocked country.  We are going out this time not as murderers, but as philanthropists.”

“I’d like to go, too,” said Lewis, his eyes lighting.  “Won’t you let me?”

“Not this trip, my boy,” said Leighton.  “I hate to refuse you anything, but don’t think I’m robbing you.  I’m not.  I merely don’t wish you to eat life too fast.  Times will come when you’ll need to go away.  Just now you’ve got things enough to hunt right here.  One of them is art.  You may think you’ve arrived, but you haven’t—­not yet.”

“I know I haven’t,” said Lewis.

Leighton nodded.

“Ever heard this sort of thing?  ’Art is giving something for nothing.  Art is the ensnaring of beauty in an invisible mesh.  Art is the ideal of common things.  Art is a mirage stolen from the heavens and trapped on a bit of canvas or on a sheet of paper or in a lump of clay.’  And so on and so on.”

Lewis smiled.

“As a matter of fact,” continued Leighton, “those things are merely the progeny of art.  Art itself is work, and its chief end is expression with repression.  Remember that—­with repression.  Many an artist has missed greatness by mistaking license for originality and producing debauch.  I don’t want you to do that.  I want you to stay here by yourself for a while and work; not with your hands, necessarily, but with your mind.  Get your perspective of life now.  Most of the pathetic ‘what-might-have-beens’ in the lives of men and women are due to misplaced proportions that made them struggle greatly for little things.”

Lewis looked up and nodded.

“Dad, you’ve got a knack of saying things that are true in a way that makes them visible.  When you talk, you make me feel as though some one had drawn back the screen from the skylight.”

Leighton shrugged his shoulders.  For a long moment he was silent; then he said: 

“A life like mine has no justification if it can’t let in light, even though it be through stained glass.”