The drawing-room was crowded ... a few visiting celebrities ...  Eoites, too, but only the quasi-celebrities among them.  The mass of the workers was as rigidly excluded now, under the new regime, as ordinary retainers ever are.

I stood by my “Southern Lady.”  She was in evening dress ... wore a lorgnette ...  I trembled as I leaned over her, for I could see the firm, white-orbed upper parts of her breasts ...  I was trying to be lightly playful, and was clumsy at it.  I took up her lorgnette and toyed with it.  I sat on the edge of a table ... and where I sat stood a supposed Greek vase of great antiquity and value.

It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional space that two objects cannot occupy the same place at one time.  I dislodged the vase.  It came to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped everything.  There fell a dead silence.  I looked down at the fragments, hardly knowing what to do....

Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.

“Razorre, come out into the lobby ...  I want to speak to you.”  I willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.

“Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham’s hung high up there on the wall?” he asked rhetorically, with an eloquent, upward sweep of his arm, “it’s so bums like you ... dirty tramps ... can’t wipe their feet on them.”

“I am so sorry, so very sorry,” I murmured, contrite.

Thinking my contrition meekness, and possibly fear of him, he went to take me by the shoulders.  I knocked his hands away promptly and quickly stepped back, on the defensive ... all my reverence for him swallowed up in indignation, rising at last, against his vulgar chiding.

At that moment, my widow, Mrs. Tighe, arrived ... she was weeping....

“Don’t be hard on the poor boy,” she pleaded ... “anyhow, it was all my fault ... and I want to pay you for your vase ... whatever it cost."...

A momentary flicker of greed lighted the Master’s eyes.  But he perceived as instantly how unmagnanimous he would appear if he accepted a cash settlement.

“I am not thinking of my financial loss ... beauty cannot be valued that way!” he exclaimed.

“Then you must not blame the boy.”

“He is clumsy ... he is a terrible fool ... he is always doing the wrong thing.  Oh, my beautiful vase!” and he wrung his hands, lost in the pose.  Out he strode through the front door.

* * * * *

The musicale had been broken up.

“My poor, dear Johnnie, I am so sorry,” murmured the young woman.  I was sitting in the large armchair where she had sat the memorable night of the lecture that neither of us attended.  She had seated herself on one of the arms.

“You mustn’t be despondent!” She was patting my hand.

She mistook my rage at the gratuitous insults Spalton had heaped on me as despondency.  She leaned closer against me ... quickly I caught her into my arms, drew her into my lap ... held her little, quiet, amazed face in my hands firmly, as I kissed and kissed her....  I knew how to kiss now....