“I believe my world is overcrowded,” Sally said, one January afternoon, two years later.

“Arlt, why don’t you take the hint?” Bobby asked languidly. “I am too comfortable to stir, and she evidently wishes to get rid of somebody.”

“Possibly she means me; but I was the last to come, so I shall outstay you both,” Miss Gannion said, laughing. “At least, Sally, your hospitality does you credit.”

With leisurely fingers, Sally was opening her teaball; but Bobby interposed.

“I wouldn’t make any tea for us, Sally. I know you are afraid it may not hold out for your crowded universe, and we three have been here often enough to have dispelled any illusions about the quality of your cups. Two are cracked, and one has a nick exactly in the spot where we drink. I suspect Arlt of having cut his wisdom teeth on it.”

“Only women cut their wisdom teeth on a teacup,” Miss Gannion observed. “But really, Sally, I would save my tea until the crowd shows itself.”

Sally shook her head.

“You interrupted me in the midst of my thesis.”

Bobby interrupted again.

“It is our only chance to get in a word. We have to insert its thin edge at a comma, or else keep still. You never have any conversational semicolons, to say nothing of periods.”

“As I was saying,” Sally repeated pertinaciously; “my world is overcrowded. I have so many acquaintances that I never get time to enjoy my friends.”

“What about now?” Bobby queried. “Here are we, and here is time. Which is lacking: enjoyment, or friendship?”

“Oh, this is an interlude, and doesn’t count. We shall just get into the midst of a little rational conversation, though, and two or three stupid people will come in and reduce us to talking about the weather.”

“You might send out cards,” Arlt suggested, with the hesitating accent which was so characteristic of him. “Why not announce that on Tuesdays you are at home to clever people and friends only?”

“Yes; but it is no subject for joking,” Sally persisted. “Last Tuesday in all that storm, for the first time this winter, Mr. Thayer came to see me. I know how busy he is, and I was just preparing to make the most of his call, when Mrs. Stanley came swishing and creaking into the room, and she babbled about her servants and her lumbago until Mr. Thayer took his departure. I wanted to administer poison.”

“Try an anodyne,” Bobby advised her. “They say that stout people yield easily to their influence. By the way, why is it polite to call a woman stout, but rude in the extreme to dub her fat? That is one of the problems I have never been able to solve. I used the wrong word in regard to Mrs. Stanley, one night, and she overheard me. Since then, she hauls in her latch-string hand over hand, whenever I turn the corner.”

“Do you mind, Bobby?” Sally inquired. “The two most peaceful years of my social life were the years immediately following the day I advised Mrs. Stanley not to attempt Juliet in public. Lately, I have wished that her memory were just a bit more retentive. Tell me, has anybody seen Beatrix, this week?”

“She was at Carnegie Hall, last night.”

Arlt’s face brightened.

“Really?”

“Yes, I coaxed her into going. You ought to feel honored, Arlt; it is the first music she has heard, this season.”

“Hasn’t she been to hear Mr. Thayer?”

“No; she hasn’t heard him since his first season. I tell her she has no idea how he has developed, nor how much she is losing; but she seems to have lost her love for music.”

“Poor, dear girl! I don’t wonder,” Sally said impetuously.

But Arlt interposed.

“Isn’t there a certain comfort to be gained from it?” he asked. “I hoped I had thought music was to inspire and help people, not to amuse them.”

“It does in theory,” Bobby returned; “only now and then it reminds one of things, and upsets the whole scheme of inspiration. But I was surprised that Beatrix went, last night.”

“What did she say?” Arlt inquired, with a frankness which yet bore no taint of egotism.

“Not very much; but her face at the close of your Andante told the story. You touched her on the raw, Arlt; but you roused her pluck to bear it. I think she will send you a note, to-day.”

“I wonder if you realize what an event for your friends this symphony was,” Sally broke in.

Arlt smiled. With growing manhood, his gravity also had grown; but his slow little smile caused his face to light wonderfully. Denied all claim to beauty, there was a great charm in the simple, modest dignity with which he bore himself. He answered Sally’s last words with an earnestness that became him well.

“Without my friends, my symphony would have been left unwritten.”

“And it was a perfect success,” Sally added.

“Success is never perfect,” he returned a little sadly. “Its merit must lie in its incompleteness, for that just urges us on to something beyond. The success on which we rest, is no better than a failure. Some day, I shall begin my ideal symphony; but, by the time I have reached my final Maestoso, I shall have learned that my ideal has moved on again beyond my reach.”

“In other words, a real genius is nothing but an artistic butter-fingers,” Bobby commented irreverently. “Stop your German philosophizing, Arlt, and help us enjoy the present by playing your Scherzo. Thayer says it is by far the best thing you have ever done.”

Obediently Arlt crossed to the piano. In his absorption in his symphony, he had by no means allowed his skill as a pianist to rust for want of use, and a little sigh of utter content went around the group, as they heard the dainty, clashing notes answer to the touch of his fingers. He was in the full rhythm of his Scherzo, playing, humming, or whistling, according to his whim and to the demands of the orchestral score, when Sally gave a sudden exclamation of warning.

“Behold the crowd! Here endeth the interlude! Enter Mrs. Lloyd Avalons!”

“What in thunder is that woman doing here, Sally?” Bobby demanded, as Arlt’s fingers dropped from the keys in the very midst of a phrase.

Sally shrugged her shoulders with the petulant gesture of a naughty child.

“How in thunder should I know, Bobby? I wish you’d ask her.”

“No use. She never takes a hint.”

A sudden change came over the group, as Mrs. Lloyd Avalons tripped daintily into the room. Miss Gannion straightened herself in her chair and took refuge in her lorgnette; Arlt’s artistic fire extinguished itself, and he once more became the taciturn young German, while Sally assumed certain of the characteristics of a frozen olive. Bobby, however, continued to smile upon the room with unabated serenity.

“What a delight to find you here!” Mrs. Lloyd Avalons exclaimed, as she took Sally’s hand.

“Miss Van Osdel has unsuspected depths to her nature,” Bobby observed gravely. “Long as I have known her, Mrs. Avalons, I assure you I have never succeeded in finding her out.”

“Oh yes. How like you that is, Mr. Dane! But I was including you all.”

“Taking us all in?” Bobby queried.

“Taking us just as you find us,” Sally added. “You also take tea, I think, Mrs. Avalons?”

“You’d better,” Bobby urged, with inadvertent pointedness. “We were just saying that Miss Van Osdel brews wisdom mingled with her tea.”

“Bobby!” Sally adjured him, in a horrified whisper; but Mrs. Lloyd Avalons had already turned to Arlt.

“I am so glad to meet you here, Mr. Arlt. All your friends, to-day, are eager to congratulate you on your wonderful symphony.”

“Yes.” Arlt’s tone was scarcely ingratiating, as he stirred his tea violently.

“Yes, it was beautiful, so sweet and harmonious. Really, you are quite taking the city by storm. You must be very busy to do so much writing. Don’t you get very tired?”

“Sometimes.” Arlt emptied his cup at a gulp.

“Oh, you must! But it is worth tiring one’s poor head, to achieve such splendid results. But don’t you ever rest? All winter long, I have been hoping you would find time to drop in on me, some Thursday.”

“Thank you.” Arlt attacked his extra lump of sugar with his spoon. Eluding his touch, it flew across the room and landed at Bobby’s feet. Stooping down, Bobby rescued it and gravely handed it back to Arlt.

“Try it again, old man,” he said encouragingly. “You’ll get the proper range in time.”

But Mrs. Lloyd Avalons returned to the charge.

“Well, as long as you won’t come to me, I must seize my chance here, if Miss Van Osdel will excuse me. We are getting up a concert for the benefit of the Allied Day Nurseries, Mr. Arlt. It is to be very select indeed, only artists of established reputation are to be invited to take part, and we shall keep the price of the tickets up high enough to shut out any undesirable people who might otherwise come. We are counting on you for two numbers.”

“But I cannot play.”

“In other words, Mrs. Avalons,” Bobby remarked: “you’ll have to discount Arlt.”

“But we must have him,” Mrs. Lloyd Avalons said, in real dismay. “We never thought of his refusing.”

Arlt shook his head in grim silence.

Mrs. Lloyd Avalons took refuge in cajolery.

“Oh, but you must! We can’t spare you, Mr. Arlt. If you don’t care for the charity, you’ll do it for me; won’t you?”

Deliberately Arlt packed the sugar and the spoon into his cup, and set the cup down on the table. Then he turned to face Mrs. Lloyd Avalons squarely.

“On the contrary, that is the very reason I cannot do it, Mrs. Lloyd Avalons. When Miss Gannion introduced me to you as Mr. Thayer’s accompanist and a pianist who needed engagements, you wished to refuse me a place on your programme. Now that others have been good enough to listen to me, you can make room for two numbers by me. I am very sorry; but I shall be unable to accept your invitation.”

There was no underlying rancor in the slow, deliberate syllables; they were merely the statement of an indisputable fact. Most women would have accepted them in silence. Not so with Mrs. Lloyd Avalons.

“But you played for Miss Van Osdel, last week,” she persisted.

Arlt rose to his feet.

“Yes, I played for Miss Van Osdel, last week, just as I hope to have the pleasure of playing for her many times more in the future. However, that is quite a different matter. Miss Van Osdel and I are very old friends, and it will always be one of my very greatest pleasures to be entirely at her service.” He made a quaint little bow in Sally’s direction, and his face lighted with the friendly, humorous smile she knew so well. Then he added, “And now I must bid you all a very good afternoon.”

He bowed again and walked away, with his simple dignity unruffled to the last. Society might bless him, or society might ban. Nevertheless, it was by no means Arlt’s intention to turn his art into a species of lap-dog, to come trotting in at society’s call, and then be dismissed to the outer darkness again, so soon as the round of its tricks was accomplished. Egotism Arlt had not; but his independence shrank at no one of the corollaries of his creed of art.

Bobby lingered after the others had gone away.

“I say, Sally,” he remarked at length, apparently apropos of nothing in particular; “how does it happen that you have never married me?”

“Probably for the very excellent reason that you have never asked me,” Sally responded frankly.

With his hands in his pockets, Bobby sauntered across to the sofa where she was sitting. There he stood contemplating her for a moment. Then he settled himself at her side.

“Well,” he said slowly; “I believe I might as well ask you now.”