you must not publish them. Not for five years at least. They must not know, Father Xavier and Father Lara. They would never let me be a nun; I would be washing dishes forever. Do you see now?" I nodded greedily. "I will pretend to them that I have burned the manuscripts, or thrown them into the lake." Wonder as to what she would do with the money, and how she could conceal its expense from her confessors crossed my mind, and I asked her, only to find that my question had tapped the fixed idea that was burning in her eyes.

"No one will ever know. I shall build a chapel in my cathedral in Paris. For my friends, for all of us, Manina Shayer, Fanny Bonner and the rest-eight of us. I owe it them, they are telling me that all the time. I am the last and I owe it them."

During the shaken silence that followed this feverish confession the waitress at the end of the room bit off her thread, shook out her apron-string, licked her fingers and descended on us. I gave the order, adding that we would like a fire lighted in the grate beside us. The waitress looked at the grate as though she had never seen it before, stuck one forefinger into the hollow of her cheek skeptically, and went away. Presently a boy appeared with sugar on his face, lit the kindling, made a tremendous racket with a coal scuttle, and returned to his interrupted tea. Throughout these incongruous proceedings Mrs. Clarke and I had sat shielding, as it were, our religious and literary passions from the vulgarity and horse-play about us. When tea had been placed before us, I attempted to lead her into conversation on her old acquaintances, but she cut me short, saying she never thought of them, and I saw something of the abhorrence of the convert for the days before the change. I arranged to meet her at the same place the next day, with the money, when a shadow suddenly fell across the table. Mrs. Clarke was in the act of extending to me "on account" the first cahier of the diaries which she brought with her. She looked up and a change came across her face, more of resignation than fear. "Father Lara!" she said, half rising. The priest with exquisite manners was beside us.

"Veronica, have I your permission to burn these books?" he asked, almost with deference.

"Yes, Father Lara,” she said, her chin trembling strangely, and her eyes returning to their myopic fixity.

"These have come between us again. First you clung to them because they represented the life you have put behind you. The second time they caused you to fall into avarice. Now they have. led you into disobedience against our authority. Veronica, have I your permission to destroy them?"

She sighed her admission again. He took the journals, and with a sudden movement threw them into the burning coals.

"I could have given your damned authority a thousand pounds for those papers," I cried.

Father Lara without looking at me remarked gently: "The obedience of the least of our postulants is worth more than ten thousand pounds to us. Come, Veronica, you will be late for the class."

Without another glance at me they went out, Mrs. Clarke buttoning her cheap cotton gloves with a sort of tearful dignity. Perhaps I could still have extracted a page or two from behind the moulded iron grate, but a strange lassitude had fallen upon me, from which I was aroused by the tall girl.

"The man with the collar's been lookin' in over the rubbertrees ever since you came," she said. I paid the account, and went out thinking of the two cherished ambitions that would never be fulfilled-that strange chapel of dead actresses and my edition of Sebastian Torr.

Thornton Wilder.

SONATA.

(The Emperor Lao Chu is seated with his mistress, the Princess Po Poi, in a small tea house of black lacquer and mother of pearl, with a late summer twilight melting drowsily into night. Across a shadowy lake are heard the last sobbing notes of a flute.)

PRINCESS PO Por (softly at first):

The master breathes, head bowed, upon a flute
Of silver. Slow, his fingers rove the stops
In low and crooning lullaby, a tune

Of infant dreams mist-woven with dancing beams
From the smiling moon; now ripple livelier notes
Free and joyous as song of Kun Yam birds.
High-poised above a sparkling lily pond-
Or gay as a chuckling stream. Then swifter move
His fingers, more disturbed in passion, love....
And hate....and whimpering fear....and swifter still
In pain, in naked quivering pain that shrieks
Grief-mad, in one last, long despairing wail

(And the Golden Oriole wails in an echoing strain),—
Then faltering, cease in a struggling, tear-choked sob,
The Whisper of a last farewell.

EMPEROR LAO CHU (slowly):

Lo, Po Poi, this is the Music of Man.

(A light breeze stirs the Lotus blossoms on the lake and plays about the Princess' silk sleeve.)

PRINCESS PO Por:

The Wind, the breath of universes, stirs

Through rich green fields of Wah and graceful groves

Of Sam Nin, heavy hung with sun-brown fruit;

Or low it laughs with the merry chattering leaves,

Dances with Oleander, Hyacinth,

And Sweet-Geranium....or weeps forlorn

About deserted doors-ghost melodies.

Then sings the lustier wind as down some gorge

It sweeps in purling, whirling eddies, till

With a gathering roar across a thousand deep
And black-rimmed cavern mouths and rocky tongues

It thunders in a mighty chord, while great
And ancient Banyons sway in ecstacy—
Then lulls in a little elfin song, a swirl
Of dew-kissed tea-rose petals.

(The Emperor takes the Princess' Hand.) EMPEROR LAO CHU:

Truly, Po Poi, this is the Music of Earth.

PRINCESS PO POI (after a pause):

Across the close-drawn lute-strings of the heart
In varied mood the All-Soul stirs. Soft toned
They vibrate in a baby's tiny laugh,

A mother's smile, or low and more subdued
In reveries at dusk time, tender dreams
That paint in sunset's afterglow; rich, now,
And deep as through the incense, to the tune
Of drum and bell and gong to Sheung Dai rise
The chanted prayers.-Clang loud the strings
In anger, noisy discords, jangling notes;
Then deeper, fiercer, rolling overtones

That throb in sympathy, in voice

Of men against a tyrant lord, they roar;—

Or thrill, unutterable, silent, full

In the press of a small warm hand!

EMPEROR LAO CHU (raising her hand slowly to his lips, very

quietly) :

Ah! This is the Music of Heaven!

Samuel Selden.

THE DECADENTS.

The fervor of fugitive passion wanes,

We are weary and wan and deflowered as death And washed by the dank torrential rains!

With the bitter tang of the spring in her breath Our Love regards us; but all the pains

Of our joys and madnesses-nought remains !

For the fires are dead on the salty fanes

Where the offering, laved in the ebb, lies cold...

At the ebb is living, and stirring complains!
And the soul of man is old.

O, for the frenzied flame consuming
Leaping within the heart once more!

And the poisonous petals, instantly blooming,
That fall from the lips in the words that adore,
And the furtive phantoms that tremble before
Our burning vision! But Dusk for lore

Has come in her mantle of fringes of mold,
And we are young, but our hearts are hoar...
For the soul of man is old.

The wings of the spirit are dead, but song
Takes wing in the drouth of the sterile soul;
And subtle music is wafted along

On the pallid, vaporous dreams that roll
Over our hearts, and our longings enfold

In a tarnished silver and sable stole... And the song and the spirit are old.

Samuel Insull, Jr.