"While I was talking just now," he remarked presently,

"I had a quite different idea."

"What?"

"For a masterpiece. A series. Like the busts of the Caesars. Only
not heads, you know. We don't see the people who do things to us
nowadays..."

"How will you do it, then?"

"Hands--a series of hands! The hands of the Twentieth Century. I'll do
it. Some day some one will discover it--go there--see what I have done,
and what is meant by it."

"See it where?"

"On the tombs. Why not? The Unknown Master of the Highgate Slope! All
the little, soft feminine hands, the nervous ugly males, the hands of
the flops, and the hands of the snatchers! And Grundy's loose, lean,
knuckly affair--Grundy the terror!--the little wrinkles and the thumb!
Only it ought to hold all the others together--in a slightly disturbing
squeeze....Like Rodin's great Hand--you know the thing!"

IV

I forget how many days intervened between that last breaking off of our
engagement and Marion's surrender. But I recall now the sharpness of my