Girl-students and grisettes, and others less respectable, had eyed him

and elbowed him, but not one had tempted him. There was no merit in his

celibacy, but to-day, as he glanced over at the English girl-student,

something about her caught his attention as never before. She was half

turned to him; her portfolio lay on the table at her side with the

remains of a scanty lunch. Her head was bowed on her hands. She looked

dejected, forlorn, bringing her little unhappiness to the small

restaurant where so many strugglers and aspirants brought their hopes

and their inspirations. This little bit of humanity seemed on this day

uninspired, cast down, and he had remarked her generally before because

of her gaiety, her eagerness, and he had avoided her because he knew

that she would be sympathetic with him.

In a sort of revenge possible on himself, and feeling his own

loneliness, he permitted himself to look long at her and saw how

miserably poor her dress was, how rusty and dusty her cape, how trodden

down were her little shoes. She was all in brown, from the old beaver

hat to her boots, in a soft, old-faded note of colour, and her hair was

gloriously golden like a chrysanthemum. As Antony looked at her she took

out her handkerchief and wiped something off her cheek and from her

eyes. His luncheon of steak and potatoes had been served him. He took up

his napkin and his dinner and limped over to the table where the English

girl sat bowed over.

"Would you like a comrade for luncheon? Say so, if you don't want me."

He saw her start, wipe her eyes and look up with a sob on her lips.

"Oh, yes, I don't mind." Her voice was stifled. "Sit down, it is good of

you."

The girl covered her face with her hands for a second and then wiped her

eyes determinedly, as if she fetched herself out of stony depths. She

smiled tremulously and her lips were as red and full and sweet as a

rose.

"Garcon," he ordered, "fetch two bocks. Yes, mademoiselle, it will do

you good."

"I say," she fluttered, "were you lonely over there in your corner?"

Fairfax nodded. She put out her little hand, stained with paint and oil,

and it was cold and delicate as it touched his. It seemed to need the

strength of the man's big, warm grasp.

"I have always liked your face, do you know--always," she said. "I knew

that you could be a real pal if you wanted. You are not like the others.

I expect you are a great swell at something. Writing?"

"No, I am a workman in Barye's studio--a sculptor."

"Oh," she said incredulously. "You look '_arrive_,' awfully

distinguished. I expect you really _are_ something splendid."

The beer came foaming. The girl lifted her glass with a hand which

trembled. Tears hung on her lashes still, ready to fall, but she was a

little sport and full of character and life. She nodded at Fairfax and

murmured--

"Here's to our being friends."

Her voice was sweet and musical. They drank the draught to friendship.

Fairfax asked cruelly: "What made you cry?"

She touched her portfolio. "There," she said, "that is the reason. My

last fortnight's work. I draw at Julian's, and I had a fearful criticism

this morning, most discouraging. I am here on my own." She stopped and

said rather faintly: "Why should I tell you?"

"We drank just now to the reason why you should."

"That's true," she laughed. "Well, then, this is my last week in Paris.

I will have to go back to England and drop painting, unless they tell me

that I am sure to have a career and that it is worth while."

A career! She was a soft, sweet, tender little creature in spite of her

good comradeship and the brave little tilt to her hat, and she was fit

for a home nest, and no more fit to battle with the storm of a career

than a young bird with a tempest.

"Let me see your portfolio, will you?"

"First," she said practically, "eat your steak and your potatoes."

Touching her eyes, she added: "I thought of what Goethe said as I cried

here--'Wer nie sein Brot mit Thraenen ass'--only it's not the first

bread and tears that have gone together in this room, I expect."

"No," returned Fairfax, "I reckon not, and you are lucky to have the

bread, Mademoiselle. Some have only tears."

"I know," she returned softly, "and I have been most awfully lucky so

far."

When they had finished he made the man clear away the things, and she

spread out the contents of her portfolio before him, watching his face,

as he felt, for every expression. He handled thoughtfully the bits of

card-board and paper, seeing on them only the evidence of a mediocre

talent, a great deal of feeling, and the indications of a sensitive

nature. One by one he looked at them and turned them over, and put them

back and tied up the green portfolio by its black tapes. Then he looked

at her, saw how white her little face had grown, how big and blue her

eyes were, how childlike and inadequate she seemed to life.

"You need not speak," she faltered. "You were going to say I'm no good.

I don't want to hear you say it."

Impulsively, he put out his strong hands and took hers that fluttered at

her coat.

"Why should you care for what I say? You have your masters and your

chiefs."

"Yes," she nodded, "and they have been awfully encouraging, all of them,

until to-day."

Fairfax looked at her earnestly. "You must not mind if you feel that you

have got it in you. Don't seek to hear others' opinions, just go boldly,

courageously on. What I say has no meaning."

He dropped her hands and the colour came back somewhat into her face.

"What you say has importance, though," she answered. "I have the feeling

that you are somebody. Anyhow, I have watched you every time you came. I

think you know things. I believe you must be a great artist. I should

believe you--I do believe you. I see you don't think I'm any good.

Besnard didn't think so when he came to-day. I don't want to go on being

a fool."

As she spoke, from the other restaurant came the notes of a fiddle and

a flute, for two wandering musicians, habitues of these smaller cafes,

had wandered in to earn the price of their luncheon. They were playing,

not very well, but very plaintively, an old French song, one in vogue in

the Latin Quarter. The sun, still magnificently brilliant, had found its

way around to the back of the place, and over the court with the ruined

marbles the light streamed through the window and fell on Fairfax and

the little girl.

"What do you say," he suggested abruptly, "to coming with me for the

afternoon? Let's go on the top of a tram and ride off somewhere."

He rose, paid the man who came for his luncheon (the girl's score had

already been settled), and stood waiting. She fingered the tapes of her

closed portfolio, her lips still trembled. The sunlight was full on her,

shining on her hair, on her old worn cape, on the worn felt hat, on the

little figure which had been so full of courage and of dreams. Then she

looked up at Antony and rose.

"I will go," she said, and he picked up the portfolio, tucked it under

his arm, and they walked out together, through the smoky larger room

where part of the lunchers were joining in the chorus of the song the

musicians played. And this little handful of the Latin Quarter saw the

two pass out together, as two pass together often from those Bohemian

refuges. Some one, as the door opened and shut on Antony and the girl,

cried: "Vive l'amour!"

CHAPTER XII

On the way out to Versailles from the top of the tram, lifted high above

Paris and the river, alongside of the vulgar head, alongside of the

strange little English girl, Fairfax listened to the outpouring of her

heart. She took his interest for granted. With an appreciative

understanding of human nature, and as though she had been bearing a

burden for years which she had never let slip, she rested it now, and

her blue eyes on his, her hands in the old woollen gloves, which she had

slipped on before they started, clasped in her lap, she talked to

Fairfax. By the time the tram stopped before the Palace of Versailles,

he had heard her story. She was the daughter of an Irish clergyman. Nora

Scarlet was her name.

Nora and Molly!

But they were very different. This girl was as gay as a lark. She

laughed frankly aloud, musically, and put her hand on his with a free

"camaraderie." She made sparkling little faces at him and called him

softly, "Ami."

"My name is Nora, Nora Scarlet, but I don't want you to tell me your

name until the end of the day, please. It is just a silly idea, but I

will call you 'Ami.' I daresay it is a great name you have got, and I

would rather feel that I don't want to know it too soon."

She had shown talent in the school where she had started in Ireland, and

had taken a scholarship and had come to Paris to study, to venture

unprepared and quite wildly into the student life, to struggle on small

means and insufficient food uphill toward art. She displayed in talking

a touching confidence in herself and worship of beauty, as well as a

simple and loyal attitude toward life in general. She occupied a

furnished room near the studio and, as she expressed it, "fished for

herself." She was the oldest of seven children, with a weight of

responsibility on herself. Her father's salary was ridiculous, she told

him, not enough to bring up one hungry child well, much less half a

dozen.

"I thought that I could support myself with my art," she told Fairfax,

"and that I should soon be _arrivee, lancee_, but to-day, when the

criticism discouraged me and I knew that I should have to write home for

money soon, well ... I'd not like to tell you what strange fancies

came." She lifted up her finger and pointed at the river as it lay

between its shores. "And now," she glanced at him, "when you tell me,

too, that I am no good at painting!"

"I haven't said that," remonstrated Fairfax; "but don't let's talk about

work now, what do you say? Let's have a holiday."

They walked up the Palace over the cobbles of the courtyard and paused

to look back at the Route de Paris, that Miss Nora Scarlet might

thoroughly picture the procession of the fish-wives and the march of the

Paris populace up to Versailles, where the people swept its violent sea

over the royal courts and the foam rose to the windows where royal faces

whitened against the panes. Nora Scarlet and Fairfax wandered through

the great rooms, part of the tourist crowd. The handsome man limped, a

student's stoop across his shoulders, by the side of the small blond

girl with her student cape and her soft hat, her hair like chrysanthemum

petals. Fairfax took occasion in the portrait room to tell her that she

looked like a Greuze. Nora Scarlet was an appreciative sightseer.

"Oh, if I could only paint," she murmured, "if I could only paint!" and

she clasped her woollen gloves prayerfully before the portraits of the

Filles de France. But the Nattiers and the Fragonards mocked her, and

the green portfolio under Fairfax's arm mocked her still more. Side by

side, they penetrated into the little rooms where a Queen lived,

intrigued, loved, and played her part. And Fairfax had his envies before

Houdon's head of Marie Antoinette.

The wide, sweet, leaf-strewn alleys were very nearly deserted where they

stood, for the day had grown colder and the winter sunlight left early

to give place to a long still winter evening. Their footsteps made no

sound on the brown carpet of the park. Antony had not stopped to ask

what kind of a woman the girl student was when he spontaneously left his

lonely seat in the restaurant to take his place at her side, but

everything she said to him revealed a frank, innocent mind. He saw that

she had come with him without thinking twice, and he should have been

touched by it. He drew her arm within his as they passed the great

fountain. The basin was empty and its curve as round and smooth as human

lips.

"Now," he said, "the time has come to talk of you and what you want to

do and can do, and how you can do it."

"That's awfully kind."

"No, those are just the questions that I have to ask myself every day

and find on some days that I haven't got the answer. It's a riddle, you

know. We don't every day quite find the answer to it. I reckon we would

never go on if we did, but it's good sport to ask and try to find out,

and, believe me, Miss Nora Scarlet, two are better than one at a riddle,

aren't they?"

"Oh, very much." They went along leisurely and after a second she

continued: "It's lonely in Paris for a girl who doesn't want to go in

for lots of things, and I have been getting muddled. But the worst

muddle is pounds, shillings and pence"--she laughed musically--"it's

reduced to pence at last, but I don't find the muddle reduced a bit."

"You want to do portraits?" he asked.

"Yes, I haven't an idea about anything else."

The trees above their heads made leafy bowers in summer, but now between

the fine bare branches, they saw the delicate wintry sky, pale with the

fading light of what had been a rare January day.

"Suppose I get an order for you to paint a portrait and you are paid in

advance."

She stopped, holding him back by the arm, and exclaimed, joyously--

"Oh, but you could not!"

"Suppose that I can. If I do succeed and you paint the portrait, will

you do something for me?"

She looked up at him quickly. He was much above her. Nora Scarlet had

seen Fairfax several times a week for many months. She knew him as well

as any person can know another by sight--she knew his clothes, the way

he wore them. It had been easy to study his face attentively, for he was

so absorbed in general that he was unconscious of scrutiny. She had

learned every one of his features pretty well by heart. Solitary as she

was, without companions or friends except for her studio mates, she had

grown to think as women do of a man they choose, to surround him with

fancies and images. She had idealized this unknown artist, and her

thoughts kept her company, and he had become almost part of her life

already. She looked up at him now and blushed. He put his hand down over

hers lightly.

"I mean that when the portrait is finished, we will have it criticized

by the subject first, then by some one in whom you have great

confidence, and if you are certain then that you have a vocation, we

will see what can be done--some way will open up. There is always sure

to be a path toward the thing that is to be. But if the criticism is

unfavourable, I want you to promise me to go back to England and to your

people, and to give up art as bravely as you can--I mean, courageously,

like a good soldier who has fought well and lost the battle. Perhaps,"

Fairfax said, smiling, "if I were not an artist my advice would be worth

less, but the place is too full of half-successes. If you can't be at

the top, don't fill up the ranks. Get down as soon as you can and be

another kind of success."

The advice was sound and practical. She listened to his agreeable voice,

softened by the Southern accent. She watched him as he talked, but his

face was not that of an adviser. It was charmingly personal and his

smile the sweetest she had ever seen. She murmured--

"You are awfully kind. I promise."

"Good," he exclaimed heartily, "you are a first-rate sort; however it

turns out, you are plucky."

The most delicious odours of moist earth, blessed with the day's

unexpected warmth, rose on the winter air. Their footfalls were lost in

the leaves. Far down at the end of the alley they could see other

strollers, but where they stood they were quite alone. The excitement of

the unusual outing, the pleasure of companionship, brought the colour to

their cheeks, a light to their eyes. The girl's helplessness, the human

struggle so like to his own, her admiration and her frankness, appealed

to him greatly. His late agitation, useless, hopeless, perilous

moreover, and which he felt he must overcome because it could have

neither issue nor satisfaction, made Fairfax turn here for satisfaction

and repose. They wandered slowly down the alley, her hand within his

arm, and he said, looking down at her--

"Meanwhile, you belong to me."

The words passed his lips before he realized what they meant, or their

importance. He did so as soon as he spoke. He felt her start. She

withdrew the hand from his arm. He stopped and said--

"Did I frighten you?" He took her little hand.

"A little," Nora Scarlet said. Her eyes were round and wide.

Antony held her hand, looking at her, trying to see a deeper beauty in

her face than was there, greater depths in her eyes than they could

contain, more of the woman to fill his need and his loneliness. He

realized how great that loneliness was and how demanding. She seemed

like a child or a bird that he had caught ruthlessly.

"Didn't you drink just now to our friendship?"

She nodded, bit her lips, smiled, and her humour returned.

"Yes, I drank to our friendship."

"Well," he said, and hesitated, "well...." He drew her a little toward

him; she resisted faintly, and Fairfax stopped and quickly kissed her, a

feeling of shame in his soul. He kissed her again, murmured something to

her, and she kissed him. Then she pushed him gently away, her face

crimson, her eyes full of tears.

"No, no," she murmured, "you shouldn't have done it. It is too awful.

It's unworthy. Ami," she gasped, "do you know you are the first man I

ever let do that? Do you believe me?" She was clinging to his hands,

half laughing, half sobbing, and the kiss was sweet, sweet, and the

moment was sweet. To one of them it was eternal, and could never come in

all her lifetime like that again.

He stifled his self-reproach. He would have taken her in his arms again,

but she ran from him, swiftly, like the bird set free.

"Wait," he called; "Nora Scarlet, I promise." He hurried to her. "You

forget I am a lame jackdaw."

Then she stood still. They were walking together, his arm around her

waist, when they came out at the alley's end. Standing by a marble bust

on its pedestal, quite alone and meditative, as if she had just looked

up, seen something and nevertheless decided to wait, Fairfax saw Mrs.

Faversham.

CHAPTER XIII

His first sensation, as he saw her, was as if a sudden light had broken

upon a soul's darkness which until this moment had blinded him,

oppressed him, condemned him; then there came a great revulsion against

himself. Mrs. Faversham was very pale, as white as the bust by whose

side she stood. She held out her hand, in its delicate glove, and tried

to greet him naturally.

"How do you do, Mr. Rainsford?"

He was conscious of how kind she was, how womanly. He had refused her

invitation and flaunted in her sight a vulgar pastoral. His cheeks were

hot, his lips hardly formed a greeting. This was the work he had offered

as an excuse to her when he had said that he could not go to Versailles.

"Then what is it to her?" he thought; "she is engaged to be married to

Cedersholm. What am I or my vulgarities to her?" There was a fresh

revulsion.

"Will you let me present Miss Scarlet," he said quietly, "Mrs.

Faversham?"

Mrs. Faversham, who had recovered herself, gave her hand into the

woollen glove of Nora Scarlet, and, looking at the young girl, said that

perhaps they had been sketching.

"Not in January," replied Nora with perfect self-possession. From the

crown of Mrs. Faversham's fur hat to the lady's shoes, the girl's honest

eyes had taken in her elegance and her grace. "We have been walking a

bit after Paris."

Fairfax felt as though he had been separated from this lady for a long

time, as though he had just come back, after a voyage whose details were

tiresome. She seemed too divine to him and at once cruelly near and

cruelly removed, in her dark dress, her small walking hat with a spray

of mistletoe shining against the fur, her faultless shoes, her face so

sweet and high-bred under her veil, her aloofness from everything with

which he came in contact, her freedom from care and struggle, from

temptation, from the sordidness of which he had long been a part. He

suffered horribly; short as the moment was, the acuteness of its

sensations comprised for him a miserable eternity.

"I have my carriage here, Mr. Rainsford. Will you not let me drive you

both back to Paris?"

He wanted nothing but to go with her then, any way, the farther the

better, and for ever. It came upon him suddenly, and he knew it. He

refused, of course, angry to be obliged to do so, angrier still at what

he was sure she would think was the reason for his doing so. She bade

them both good-bye, now thoroughly mistress of herself, and reminded him

that she would expect him the next day at three. She asked Miss Scarlet

many questions about her work and the schools, as they walked along a

little together, before Mrs. Faversham took the path that led to the

gate where her carriage waited.

* * * * *

When they were together again alone, Fairfax and his companion, in the

tram, he felt as though he had cut himself off once again, by his folly,

from everything desirable in the world. The night was cold. He did not

realize how silent he was or how silent she was. When they had nearly

reached Paris, Miss Scarlet said--

"Is it her portrait you thought I might get to paint?"

The question startled him, the voice as well. It was like being spoken

to suddenly by a perfect stranger.

"Yes," he answered, "she is wonderfully generous and open-hearted. I am

sure that she would give you an order."

"Please don't bother," said the girl proudly. "I would not take the

order."

Her tone was so curt and short that it brought Fairfax back to

realities.

"Why, pray, don't you find her paintable?" he asked.

The girl's voice was contemptuous. "I don't know. I didn't look at her

with that idea."

Fairfax had nothing left him but his self-reproach, his humiliation, his

sense of degradation, though God knows the outing was innocent enough!

The Thing had happened. The Event had transpired. The veil had been

drawn away from his heart when he saw her there in the park and spoke to

her. The idea that she must think him light and vulgar-minded, an

ordinary Bohemian, amusing himself as is the fashion in the Latin

Quarter, was unbearable to him. He would have given his right hand to

have been alone in the park and to have met her alone. Under the spell

of his suffering, he said cruelly to the girl whom he had so wantonly

captured--

"If you won't let me help you in my way, I'm afraid I can't help you at

all."

And she returned, controlling her voice: "No, I am afraid you cannot

help me."

He was unconscious of her until they reached the centre of Paris and he

found himself in the street by her side, and they were crossing the Pond

des Arts on foot. The lamps were lit. The tumult and stir of the city

was around them, the odour of fires and the perfume of the city pungent

to their nostrils. They walked along silently, and Fairfax asked her

suddenly--

"Where shall I take you? Where do you live?" and realized as he spoke

how little he knew of her, how unknown they were to each other, and yet

what a factor she had been in his emotional life. He had held her in his

arms and kissed her not three hours ago.

She put her hand out to him. "We will say good-bye here," she said

evenly. "I can go home alone."

"Oh no," he objected, but he saw by her face that in her, too, a

revulsion had taken place, perhaps stronger than his own. He was ashamed

and annoyed. He put out his hand and hers just touched it.

"Thank you," she said, "for the excursion, and would you please give me

my portfolio?"

He handed it to her. Then quite impulsively: "I don't want to part from

you like this. Why should I? Let me take you home, won't you?"

He wanted to say, "Forgive me," but she had possessed herself of her

little sketches, the poor, inadequate work of fruitless months. She

turned and was gone almost running up the quays, as she had run before

him down the alley of Versailles. He saw her go with great relief, and,

when the little brown figure was lost in the Paris multitude, he turned

and limped home to the studio in the Quais.

CHAPTER XIV

He did not go to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne at the appointed hour,

and was so ungracious as not to send her any word. He took the time for

his own work, and from thence on devoted himself to finishing the

portrait of his mother. Meanwhile, Dearborn, enveloped in smoke, dug

into the mine of his imagination and brought up treasures and nearly

completed his play. He recited from it copiously, read it aloud, wept at

certain scenes which he assured Tony would never be as sad to any

spectator as they were to him.

"I wrote them on an empty stomach," he said.

Fairfax, meanwhile, finished his statuette and decided to send it to an

exhibition of sculpture to be opened in the Rue de Sevres. He had

bitterly renounced his worldly life, and was shortly obliged to pawn his

dress suit, and, indeed, anything else that the young men could gather

together went to the Mont de Piete, and once more the comrades were

nearly destitute and were really clad and fed by their visions and their

dreams.

"You see," he said one day, shortly, to Dearborn, when the silence

between the quays and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne had grown

intolerable to him, "you see how indifferent she is. She doesn't know

what has become of me. For all she knows I may be drowned in the Seine."

"Or imprisoned for debt," said Dearborn, cheerfully, "that's more

likely. The tailor doesn't believe you have gone to London, Fairfax. Try

a more congenial place, Tony. Let it be Monte Carlo next time--every one

goes there sooner or later."

When he came back from Versailles he told Dearborn nothing about his

escapade in detail, simply mentioning the fact that he had taken out a

little girl to spend the day in the woods and that she had bored him in

the end, and that he had had the misfortune to meet Mrs. Faversham

unexpectedly.

Dearborn was one of those subtle spirits who do not need to be told

everything. He rated Antony for playing what he called an ungallant part

to the little Bohemian.

"You say her hair was like chrysanthemums and that she had violet eyes?

Why, she is a priceless treasure, Tony! How could you desert her?"

And several times Dearborn tried to extract something more about the

deserted little girl from his friend, but it was in vain.

"I am sorry," Dearborn said. "We need women, Tony--we need to see the

flutter of their dresses, to watch them come and go in this little room.

By Jove, I often want to open the door and invite up the concierge, the

concierge's wife, his aunt 'and children three' or any, or all of Paris

who would come and infuse new life into us. Anything that is real flesh

and blood, to chase for a moment visions and dreams away and let us

touch real hands."

"You don't go out enough, old man."

"And you went out too much, Fairfax. It's not going out--I want some one

to come in. I want to see the studio peopled. You have grown so morose

and I have become such a navvy that our points of view will be false the

first thing we know."

The snow had been falling lightly. There was a little fringe of it along

the sill, and toward sunset it had turned cold, and under the winter fog

the sun hung like an orange ball behind a veil. The Seine flowed tawny

and yellow under their eyes, as they stood together talking in the

window.

Fairfax was in his painting clothes, the playwright in his beloved

dressing-gown that Fairfax had not the heart to pawn for coffee and

coal. There was a sound of footsteps on the stairs without.

"It's the fellows coming to take my statuette," said Fairfax.

"It's the tailor, the bootmaker and the shirtmaker," said Dearborn. "Go

behind the screen, Tony--run to Monte Carlo."

There was a tap at the door and a cheerful voice called--

"Mr. Rainsford, _c'est moi_."

"It is Potowski. I will have to let him in, Bob. Here's all Paris for

you. You wanted it."

He opened the door for Count Potowski.

The Polish singer came quickly in, his silk hat and his cane in his

hand. He looked around brightly.

"You don't hide from me," he said. "I have a fatal grasp when I take

hold. You never call on me, Monsieur--so I call on you. Guerrea!--which

means in Polish what 'altro' means in Italian, 'Doch' in German, 'Voila'

in French, and in unenthusiastic English, nothing at all."

Fairfax presented the Count to Dearborn, who beamed on him, amused, and

Potowski glanced at the cold, cheerless Bohemia. It was meagre. It was

cold. Privation was apparent. The place was not without a charm, and it

had distinction. There were the evidences of intense work, of devotion

to the ideal. There were the evidences of good taste and good breeding.

The few bits of furniture were old and had been bought for a song, but

selected with judgment. Fairfax's statuette waited on its pedestal to be

carried away--in the winter light, softened and subdued by mist, Mrs.

Fairfax read in her chair. Dearborn's table, strewn with his papers and

books, told of hours spent at a beloved labour. There was nothing

material to attract--no studio properties or decorations to speak of.

Two long divans were placed against a wall of agreeable colour. There

was nothing but the spirit of art and work, and the spirit of youth as

well, but Potowski was delighted. He pointed to the statuette.

"This," he said, "is the lovely lady with whom you have been shut up all

these days. It is charming, Monsieur."

"It is a study of my mother as I remember her."

"I salute it," said Potowski, making a little inclination. "I salute

_you_. It is beautiful." He put his hand on Fairfax's arm. "You do my

wife. You do the Contessa," said Potowski, "the same. I adore it. It

looks my wife. It might be her, Monsieur. But all beauty is alike, is

not it? One lovely woman is all women. Are you not of my opinion?"

He swam toward Dearborn who was fascinated by Potowski's overcoat lined

with fur, and with the huge fur collar, with his patent shoes with their

white tops, with his bright waistcoat, his single eyeglass, his shining

silk hat and, above all, by the gay foreign face, its waxed moustache

and its sparkling dark eyes.

Dearborn wrapped his dressing-gown modestly around him to conceal his

shirtless, collarless condition. Running his hands through dishevelled

red hair, he responded--

"No, I don't agree with you. I guess your feminine psychology is at

fault there, Count."

"_Rreally_ not," murmured the Count, looking at him eagerly.

"Mr. Dearborn is a playwright," said Antony. "He is a great student of

character."

Potowski waved his hand in its light glove. "You write plays, Monsieur?

You shall write me a libretto. I have been looking for ever for some one

to write the words for a _hopera_ I am making."

Dearborn nodded. "Far from being all alike, I don't think that there

have been two women alike since Eve."

"_Rreally!_"

Potowski looked at the red-headed man as if he wondered whether he had

met and known all women.

"You find it so, Monsieur? Now I have been married three times. Every

one of them were lovely women. I find them all the same."

"You must have a very adaptable, assimilating and modifying nature,"

said Dearborn, smiling.

"Modifying? What is that?" asked the Pole sweetly.

Neither of the young men made excuses for the icy cold room. They were

too proud. They had nothing to offer Potowski, not even a cigarette, but

the Pole forced his cigar-case upon them, telling them that he made his

cigarettes with a machine by the thousand.

"My wife, Contessa Potowski, makes them, I mean. I do myself the

pleasure to send you a box. They're contraband. You will be arrested if

the police knows so."

"That," said Dearborn, "would really disappoint the tailor. I think he

would like to get in his own score first. But I would rather go to

prison as a contrabander than as a debtor."

They sat on the sofa together and smoked, their breath white in the cold

room. But the amiable Potowski beamed on them, and Antony saw Dearborn's

delight at the outside element. And Dearborn sketched his scenario, the

colour hot in his thin cheeks, and Potowski, rubbing his hands to warm

them, hummed airs from his own opera in a heavenly voice, and the voice

and the enthusiasm magnetized poor Dearborn, carried out of his rut, and

before he knew it he had promised to write a libretto for "Fiametta."

Whilst they talked the porters came and took away the statuette of Mrs.

Fairfax, and Potowski said--

"It was like seeing _they_ carry away my wife." And, when they had gone,

Antony lighted the candles and Potowski rose and cried, as though the

idea had just come to him: "Guerrea! My friends, I am alone to-night. My

wife has gone to sing in Brussels. I implore you to come out to dinner

with me--I know not where." He glanced at the sculptor and playwright,

as they stood in the candle light. He had only seen Fairfax a

well-dressed visitor at Mrs. Faversham's entertainments. On him now a

different light fell. In his working clothes, there was nothing

poverty-stricken about him, but the marks of need were unmistakably in

the environment. He spoke to Dearborn, but he looked at Fairfax. "I have

grown very fond of him. I love to speak my thoughts at him. We don't

always agree, but we are always good for each other. I have not seen him

for some time. I thought he go away."

Dearborn smiled. "He _was_ just going to Monte Carlo," he murmured.

Potowski, who did not hear, went on: "We will go and eat in some

restaurant on this side of the river. I am tired of the Cafe de Paris.

We will see a play afterwards. There is 'La Dame aux Camelias' with the

divine Sarah. We laugh at dinner and we shall go and sob at La Dame aux

Camelias. I like a happy weeping now and then." He swam toward them

affably and appealingly. "I don't dress. I go as I am."

Dearborn grasped one of the yellow-gloved hands and shook it.

"Hang it all! I'm going, Tony. There are two pair of boots, anyhow. I

haven't been to a play," he laughed excitedly, "since I was a child.

Hustle, Tony, we will toss up for the best suit of clothes."

The drama of Dumas gave Antony a beautiful escape from reality. La Dame

aux Camelias disenchanted him from his own problems for the time. In the

Count's box he sat in the background and fed his eyes and his ears with

the romantic and ardent art of the Second Empire. He found the piece

great, mobile, and palpitating, and he was not ashamed. The divine Sarah

and Marguerite Gautier died before his eyes, and out of the ashes

womanhood arose and called to him, as the Venus de Milo had called to

him down the long gallery, and distractions he had known seemed soulless

and unreal shapes. He worshipped Dumas in his creation.

"Rainsford," whispered Potowski, laying his hand on Antony's knee, "what

do you t'ink, my friend?" The tears were raining down his mobile face;

he sighed. "_Arrt_," he said in his mellow whisper, "is only the

expression of the feeling, the beautiful expression of the feeling. That

is the meaning of all _arrt_."

The big red curtain fell slowly and the three men, poet, singer and

sculptor, kept their seats as though still under the spell of Dumas and

unable to break it.

"Tony," said Dearborn, as they went out together, "I am going to burn up

all four acts."

CHAPTER XV

The middle of January arrived, and he thought Cedersholm would have come

by that time and supposed that they would be off for Rome.

The study of his mother was accepted by the jury for the exhibition in

the Rue de Sevres, and Fairfax went on the opening day, saw his name in

the catalogue, and his study on the red pedestal made a dark mellow note

amongst the marbles. He stood with the crowd and listened with beating

heart to the comments of the public. He watched the long-haired

Bohemians and the worldly people, the Philistine and the elite as they

surged, a little sea of criticism, approval, praise and blame, through

the rooms.

"Pas mal, ca." "Here is a study that is worth looking at." "By whom is

this?"

And each time that he heard his name read aloud--Thomas Rainsford--he

was jealous of it for Antony. It seemed a sacrilege, a treachery. He

wandered about, looking at the other exhibits, but could not keep away

from his own, and came back timidly, happily, to stand by the figure of

his mother in her chair. There was much peace in the little work of art,

much repose. He seemed to see himself again a boy, as he had been that

day when she asked for the cherries and he had run off to climb for

them--and had gone limping ever since. She had sat languidly with her

book that day, as she sat now, immortalized by her son in clay.

Some one came up and touched his arm. "Bonjour, Rainsford." It was

Barye, his chief. He had been looking at the group behind the sculptor.

He said briefly: "Je vous felicite, monsieur." He smiled on his

journeyman from under shaggy brows. "They will talk about you in the

_Figaro_. C'est exquis."

Fairfax thanked him and watched Barye's face as the master scrutinized

and went around the little figure. He put out his hand to Fairfax.

"Come and see me to-morrow. I want to talk to you."

Fairfax answered that he would be sure to come, just as though he were

not modelling at the studio for ten francs a day. He had been careful

all along not to repeat his error of years before. He had avoided

personalities with his master, as he toiled like a common day-labourer,

content to make his living and to display no originality; but now he

felt a sense of fellowship with the great Frenchman and walked along by

Barye's side to the door, proud to be so distinguished. He glanced over

the crowd in the hope of seeing Her, but instead, walking through the

rooms, his eyeglass in his eye, the little red badge of the Legion of

Honour in his coat, he saw Cedersholm.

The following day, when he went to the exhibition, the man at the door

handed a catalogue to Fairfax and pointed to No. 102, against which was

the word "Sold." His price had been unpretentious.

"Moreover," said the man, "No. 102 will certainly have a medal."

Fairfax, his hands in his empty pockets, was less impressed by that

prognostication than by the fact that there was money for him somewhere.

The man opened the desk and handed Fairfax an envelope with five hundred

francs in it.

"Who was the purchaser?" Fairfax looked at the receipt he was given to

sign and read: "Sold to Mr. Cedersholm."

"Mais non," he exclaimed shortly, "ca, non!"

He was assured, however, that it was the American sculptor and no other.

On his way home he reflected, "She sent him to purchase it." And the

five hundred francs bill burned in his pocket. Then he called himself a

fool and asked what possible interest she could still have in Thomas

Rainsford, whose news she had not taken in four weeks. And also, he

reflected, that so far as Cedersholm was concerned, Thomas Rainsford had

nothing to do with Antony Fairfax. "He merely admired my work," he

reflected bitterly. "He has seemed always singularly to admire it."

He paid some pressing debts, got his clothes out of pawn, left Dearborn

what he wanted, and was relieved when the last sou of the money was

gone.

"I wonder, Bob," he said to Dearborn, "when I shall ever have any

'serious money.'" And with sudden tenderness he thought of Bella.

Dearborn, who had also recovered a partially decent suit of clothes,

displayed his trousers and said--

"I think some chap has been wearing my clothes and stretched them." They

hung loose on him.

Fairfax laughed. "You have only shrunk, Bob, that's all. You need

feeding up."

The studio had undergone a slight transformation, which the young men

had been forced to accede to. A grand piano covered with a bright bit of

brocade stood in the centre of the studio, a huge armchair, with a

revolving smoking-table, by its side. The chair was for Dearborn to loll

in and dream in whilst Potowski played and sang at the piano. Dearborn

was thus supposed to work the libretto for "Fiametta."

Potowski, who came in at all hours, charmed the very walls with his

voice, sang and improvised; Fairfax worked on the study he was making

for Barye, and Dearborn, in the big chair, swathed in his wrapper, made

notes, or more often fell serenely to sleep, for he worked all night on

his own beloved drama, and if it had not been for Potowski he would have

slept nearly all day. The Pole, at present, had gone to Belgium to fetch

his wife, who had been away for several weeks.

When there was a knock on the door on this afternoon, the young men,

used to unexpected visitors, cried out--

"Come in--entrez donc!"

But there was the murmur of a woman's voice without, and Fairfax, his

sculpting tools in his hands, opened the door. It was Mrs. Faversham.

He stood for a dazed second unable even to welcome her. Dearborn sprang

up in embarrassment and amusement. Mrs. Faversham herself was not

embarrassed.

"Is not Potowski here?" shaking hands with Antony. "I had expected to

meet him. Didn't he tell you that I was coming? I understood that you

expected me."

Fairfax shut the door behind her. "You are more than welcome. This is my

friend, Mr. Dearborn. You may have heard Potowski speak of him."

She shook hands with the red-haired playwright, whom she captivated at

once by her cordiality and her sweet smile. Of course she had heard of

him and the libretto. Potowski had given her to understand that she

might hear the overture of "Fiametta."

The young men exchanged glances and neither of them told her that

Potowski was in Belgium. Dearborn rolled the chair toward her and waved

to it gracefully.

"This is the chair of the muses, Mrs. Faversham, and not one of them has

been good enough to sit in it before now."

She laughed and sat down, and Fairfax looked at her with joy.

"We must give Mrs. Faversham some tea," said Dearborn, "and if you will

excuse me while we wait for Potowski, I will pop out and get some milk

and you boil the tea-kettle."

He took his hat and cape and ran out, leaving them alone.

Mrs. Faversham looked at the sculptor in his velveteen working clothes,

the background of his workshop, its disorder and its poverty around him.

"How nice it is here," she said. "I don't wonder you are a hermit."

"Oh," he exclaimed, "don't compliment this desolation."

She interrupted him. "I think it is charming. You feel the atmosphere of

living and of work. You seem to see things here that are not visible in

rooms where nothing is accomplished."

He sat down beside her. "Are there such rooms?" he asked. "I don't

believe it. The most thrilling dramas take place, don't they, in the

most commonplace settings?"

As though she feared that Dearborn would come back, she said quickly--

"I don't know why you should have been so unkind. I have heard nothing

of you for weeks, do you know, excepting through Potowski. It wasn't

kind, was it?"

"I was rude and ungrateful, but I could not do otherwise."

She bent forward to him as he sat on the divan. "I wonder why?" she

asked. "Were we not friends? Could you not have trusted me? Do you think

me so narrow and conventional--so stupid?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and he smiled a little, thinking of Nora Scarlet.

"It is not quite what you think."

He was angry with her, with the facts of their existence, with her great

fortune, and her engagement to the man he despised above all others, his

own incognito and the fact that she had sent Cedersholm to buy his

study, and that he could not express to her, without insult, his

feelings or tell her frankly who he was.

"You were not kind, Mr. Rainsford."

He reflected that she thought him the lover of a Latin Quarter student,

if she thought at all, which she probably did not. Without humility he

confessed--

"Yes, I have been very rude indeed." He wiped his clay-covered hands

slowly, each finger separately, his eyes bent. He rose abruptly. "Would

you care to look at a study I am making for Barye?" He drew off the

cloths from the clay he was engaged in modelling. She only glanced at

the group and he asked her, almost roughly: "Why did you buy by proxy my

little study in the exhibition? Why did you ask Cedersholm to do so?"

Mrs. Faversham looked at him in frank surprise. "Your study in the

exhibition? I knew nothing of it. I did not know you had exhibited. I

have been ill for a fortnight, and have not seen a paper or heard a hit

of news."

He was softened. His emotions violently contradicted themselves, and he

saw now that she had grown a little thinner and looked pale.

"Have you been ill? What a boor you must think me never to have

returned!"

She was standing close to the pedestal and rested her hand on the

support near his wooden tools. She wore a beautiful grey drees, such a

one as only certain Parisian hands can create. It fitted her to

perfection, displaying her shape, and, where the fur opened at the neck,

amongst the lace he saw the gleaming and flashing of a jewel whose value

would have made a man rich. Already the air was sweet with the fragrance

of the scent she used. She had been in grey when he had first seen her

on the day of the unveiling of the monument. Fairfax passed his hand

across his eyes, as though to brush away a vision which, like a mist,

was still between them. He put his hand down over hers on the pedestal.

"I love you," he said very low. "That is the matter. That is the

trouble. I love you. I want you to know it. I dare love you. I am

perfectly penniless and I am glad of it. I want to owe everything to my

art, to climb through the thorns to where I shall some day reach. I am

proud of my poverty and of my emancipation from everything that others

think is necessary to happiness. I am rude. I cannot help it. I shall

never see you again. I ought not to speak to you in my barren room. I

know that you are not free and that you are going to be married, but you

must hear once what I have to tell you. I love you.... I love you."

She was as motionless as the grey study. He might himself have made and

carved "the woman in her entirety," for she stood motionless before him.

"Tell Cedersholm," he said bitterly, "tell him that a poor sculptor, a

struggler who lives to climb beyond him, who will some day climb beyond

him, loves you."

The arrogance and pride of his words and her immobility affected him

more than a reproof or even speech. He took her in his arms, and she was

neither marble nor clay, but a woman there.

"Tell him," he murmured close to her cheek, "that I have kissed you and

held you."

And here she said; "Hush!" almost inaudibly, and released herself. She

was trembling. She put her hands to her eyes. "I shall tell him nothing.

He is nothing to me. I sent him away when he first came, a fortnight

ago. I shall never see Cedersholm again."

"What!" cried Tony, looking at her in rapture, "what, you are _free_?"

At his heart there was triumph, excitement, wonder, all blending with

the bigger emotion. He heard himself ask her eagerly: "Why, why did you

do this?"

There were tears on her eyelids.

His face flushing, his eyes illumined, he looked down on her and lifted

her face to him in both his hands.

"Why?"

"I think you know," she murmured, her lips trembling.

He gave a cry, and as he was about again to embrace her they heard

Dearborn's step upon the stairs.

* * * * *

Mrs. Faversham was in the window looking out upon Paris, and Fairfax was

modelling on his study when the playwright came in with a can of milk,

some madeleines and a pot of jam.

After she had gone he wanted to escape and be alone, but Dearborn

chatted, pacing the studio, whilst Fairfax dressed and shaved, praising

the visitor.

"She's a great lady, Tony. What breeding and race! And she's not what

the books call 'indifferent' to you."

"Go to the devil, Dearborn!"

Dearborn went to work instead, not to lose the inspiration of the lovely

woman. He began a new scene, and dressed his character in dove grey with

silver fox at her throat.

CHAPTER XVI

Fairfax, at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, found instead of the

entrance he had expected, a note for him.

"I cannot see you to-night. Be generous,--understand me. Mr.

Cedersholm leaves for Russia to-morrow, he has asked me as a last

favour to let him see me. I have done him so much wrong that I

cannot refuse him. Come early to-morrow morning, and we will walk

in the Bois together. I am yours,

"MARY."

He read the letter before the footman, and the "yours, Mary" made his

heart bound and his throat contract. He walked toward the Champs Elysees

slowly, thinking. Cedersholm sailed to-morrow, away from France. He was

sent away beaten, bruised, conquered. He must have loved her. No man

could help it. Was this the beginning of Fairfax's triumph? Well, he

could not help it--he was glad. Cedersholm had stolen his fire, the

labour of his youth, and now he would not have been human if there had

not been a thrill through him that the conqueror knows. He could spare

him this farewell evening with the woman who signed herself "I am yours,

Mary."

"Vade in Pace," he murmured.

Then the vision of the woman rose more poignant than anything else, and

he saw her as she had stood under his hands, the tears in her eyes, and

the fire and pallor of passion on her face.

What should he do now? Marry her, of course. He would be married, then,

twice at thirty. He shook his broad shoulders as though instinctively he

chafed under the sudden adjusting to them of a burden. He limped out

into the Champs Elysees, under the rows of light where the lamps were

like illumined oranges. The vehicles twinkled by like fire-flies in the

mist. Before him was the Palais de l'Industrie and back of it stretched

the Champ de Mars and Napoleon's tomb. The freedom of the night and the

hour was sweet to him; and he dreamed as he limped slowly down the

Avenue under the leafless trees. Probably wisdom would tell him that, if

he married now, it would be the end of his career. Love was an

inspiration, a sharp impelling power to art, but marriage, a home,

another household, another hearth and family, beautiful as the picture

was, seemed to him, even bright and keen as was his passion, to be

captivity. And the memory of Albany came back to him, the cold winter

months, the days on the engine, the blizzards against the tenement

panes, household cares, small and petty, the buying of coal and food,

and the constant duties which no man can shrink from and be a man, and

which fret the free spirit of the creator. Moreover, the anguish of

those days returned, biting his very entrails at the remembrance of his

griefs, his remorse, his regrets. Molly by the study light, patient and

wifely, rose before his eyes. There was his wife, and she seemed holy

and stainless, set apart for that position and very perfect. He saw her

lying pale and cold, beautiful as marble, with the little swathed form

on her bosom, which had given and never nourished. He saw them both--his

wife and child. Can a man begin over again? Can he create anew,

perfectly anew, the same vision? He saw her go through the open door,

holding it wide for him. So she should hold it at the last. He could

give her this. He had defrauded her of so much. He could give to her to

eternity a certain faithfulness.

He was exalted. He walked freely, with his head uplifted. It was a misty

evening and the mists blew about him as he limped along in his student's

cape, his spirit communing with his ideals and with his dead. Before,

his visions took form and floated down the Avenue. Now they seemed

unearthly, without any stain of human desire, without any worldly

tarnish. He must be free. The latitude of his life must be unbounded by

any human law, otherwise he would never attain. The flying forms were

sexless and his eyes pursued them like a worshipper. They were angelic.

For the moment he had emancipated himself from passion.

He reached the Place de la Concorde. It was ten o'clock. He could not go

home to be questioned by Dearborn--indeed, he could not have stood a

companion. He called a cab and told the man to drive him up to the Bois

de Boulogne, and they rolled slowly up the Avenue down which he had just

come. But in what position did he stand toward Mary Faversham? She had

refused Cedersholm because she loved him and he loved her--more than he

ever could love, more than he ever had loved. A cab passed him in which

two forms were enlaced. The figures of two lovers blotted in the

darkness. Along the alleys, under the winter trees, every now and then

he saw other lovers walking arm-in-arm, even in winter warmed by the

eternal fire. He touched his pocket where her note lay and his emotions

stirred afresh.

He dreamed of her.

He had been tortured day by day, these weeks, by jealousy of Cedersholm,

and this helped him on in his sentimental progress. They passed the

street, which a moment before he had taken from her house, to come out

upon the Champs Elysees. They rolled into the Bois, under the damp

darkness and the night, and the forest odours came to him through the

window of the cab. She would have to wait until he was rich and famous.

As far as her fortune was concerned, if she loved him she could give it

to the poor. He could tell her how to use it. She should never spend a

cent of it on herself. He must be able to suffice for her and for him.

Rich or poor, the woman who married him would have to take him as he

was. On the lake the mists blew over the water. They lay white as

spirits among the trees. Everything about the dark and silent night was

beautiful to him, made beautiful by the sacred warfare in his own mind.

Above all came the human eagerness to see her again, to touch her again,

to tell his love, to hear her say what Dearborn's coming had prevented.

And he would see her to-morrow morning. It was profanity to walk in

these woods without her.

"Go back," he called to the coachman, "go back quietly to the Quais."

He hoped that he should be able to sleep and that the next day would

come quickly. He became ardent and devoted as he dreamed, and all the

way back his heart ached for her.

When he entered the studio and called Dearborn he received no response.

There was a note from the playwright on the table--he would not be

back until the next morning.

Fairfax, his hand under his pillow, crushed her letter, and the words:

"I am yours, Mary," flushed his palm and his cheek.

* * * * *

He had been awake since dawn, fire in his blood and heart animating his

brain and stimulating his creative power. In the early light he had

seated himself to make a few sketches, drawing little exquisite studies

of her, and the face on the paper was ideal, irritatingly so. The chin

and the cheek was young and soft, too youthful for Mrs. Faversham. It

suggested Bella.

When he went to see her that afternoon, for the first time he was shown

upstairs. Each step was sacred to him as he mounted to the part of the

house in which she lived her intimate life. The stairs were marble,

covered by thick rugs; the iron balustrade had been brought from a

chateau in the days of the Revolution. Along the wall at his side hung

splendid tapestries, whose colours would have delighted him at another

time. But his eyes now were blinded to material things. His soul, heart

and nature were aflame, and he walked on air. When he was shown into a

small room, Mrs. Faversham's own sitting-room, his agitation was so

great that he seemed to walk through a mist.

She was not there. The day was fresh and the wood fire burning across

the andirons called to him with a friendly voice. The objects by which

she surrounded herself represented a fortune; the clock before him,

which marked the hour in which he first came to see his love, had

belonged to Marie Antoinette, and it beamed on the lover from its wise

old clever face,--crystal water fell noiselessly, as the minutes passed,

from a little golden mill over which watched two Loves like millers.

There were her books on the table, bound with art and taste. There were

her writing things on her desk, and a half-finished letter on the

blotter. There was her "chaise-longue" with its protective pillows, its

sable cover, and between the lace curtains Antony could see the trees of

the park. On the footstool a Pekinese dog sat looking at him

malevolently. It lifted its fluffy body daintily and raised its

impertinent little face to the visitor. Then a door opened and she came

in murmuring his name. Antony, seeing her through a mist of love which

had not yet cleared, took her in his arms, calling her "Mary, Mary!" He

felt the form and shape of her in his arms. As dream women had never

given themselves to him, so she seemed to yield.

When they sat side by side on the little sofa the Pekinese dog jumped up

and sat between them. She caressed it with one hand, laying the other on

Antony's shoulder.

"I must tell you my life," he said, and his sight cleared as he spoke,

and he saw her face transformed by its emotion, her eyes adoring and

beautiful, her lips parted as if the breath of life he had given to her

left her wondering still.

"Don't tell me of anything to-day."

He took the hand that lay on his shoulder and raised it. "I must tell

you now."

"I ask for nothing, Antony. What does the past matter?" She bent forward

and kissed him on his eyes. "I would like to think they had never looked

at anything before to-day."

He smiled. "But they have looked hard at many things, Mary. They will

always look deeply, and I want you to look back with me."

She sighed. "Then, forward with me." The Pekinese dog sprang into her

lap. "Go on," she said docilely; "but I am so divinely happy! Why should

we think of anything else?"

He brushed away the mist that threatened again to cloud his vision. He

took her hand and held it firmly and, lifting up his head, began frankly

to tell her of his past.

"I am a Southerner, born in New Orleans...."

As he talked she listened spellbound by his power of narrative. In his

speech he was as charming a creator as in his art. She saw the picture

of his Louisiana home; she saw the exquisite figure of his mother; she

saw the beginning of his genius and his poetic, dreaming years. When he

began the more realistic part of his story, talking aloud like this of

himself for the first time to a woman he loved, he forgot her entirely,

carried back by a strong force to the beginning of his struggles in New

York. She listened, unchanged and a little terrified, as he told her of

his work in the sculptor's studio, disguising the name of the man for

whom he worked. She stopped him, her hand on his. So had she asked

previously Cedersholm. Her voice brought him back to the present, to a

feeling that for nothing in the world would he tell her yet, and he said

"No, no," veiling the fact so that he could not guess, and passed over

the misery of his master's treachery and his defeat. But through his

narrative like a flame, charming, brilliant, vivifying, flashed the

personality of Bella, though a child only, still a woman, and again Mary

Faversham, with her hand on his stopped him--

"What a bewitching child," she said. "Don't speak of her with such fire.

I believe you loved her! She must be a woman."

Antony stirred. He rose from the divan where he was sitting and crossed

over to the fireplace and stood by the eighteenth-century clock where

the crystal water fell with the passing moments. She looked at him as he

stood there, powerfully built, strong, the light of his feeling and of

his introspection kindling in his eyes and on his brow. It had been

three o'clock when he began his story. The afternoon grew paler, the

fire died down to ashes on the little hearth. He took a cigarette from

his pocket, lit it and stood smoking a few moments. Then he went in his

imagination to Albany and carried his hearer with him, and he began to

speak of Molly. He waited for a moment before laying bare to her his

intimate life. As he turned and met her eyes, he said--

"I do not know how to tell you this. You must listen as well as you can.

It is life, you know, and there are many kinds."

Antony, absorbed in his speech, forgot her entirely. He told her of

Molly Shannon with a tenderness that would have moved any woman. When

he closed the chapter of his married life, with his last words a silence

fell, and he saw that she was moved beyond what he had dreamed she would

be. He went back to her, waited a moment, then sat down and put his arm

around her.

"That is my past," he murmured. "Can you forget what there is in it of

defeat and forget its sorrow?"

She kissed him and murmured: "I love you the better for it. It seems you

have come to me through thorny ways, Antony. Perhaps I can make you

forget them."

He did not tell her that she would. Even in this moment, when she was in

his arms, he knew that in her there would be no such oblivion for him.

The marks were too deep upon him. He felt them now. With what he had

been saying, there came back to him a sense of the tremendous burden he

had borne when poor, a sense of the common burden we all bear and which

in the heart of the poet nothing ever entirely lifts.

"Listen," he said urgently and with a certain solemnity. "Any other man

would speak to you about nothing but love. I can do it some day perhaps

too easily, but not now, for this is our beginning and between us both

there must be nothing to conceal." He thought she started a little, and

said hastily: "I mean, nothing for our souls to hide. What I have told

you is my life, but it does not end there. I adore my work. I am a

worker born, I don't know how much of one, but I must give my time and

my talent to it."

"I know, I know," she breathed. "Do you think I don't realize it,

Antony? Do you think I don't adore you for it? Why, it is part of what

makes me love you."

"That is all," he said. "I could no more emancipate myself from my work

than I can from my ideals; they are part of me. I am perfectly poor."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, softly, "don't, don't speak of that."

He turned his fine eyes on her with a light in them whose courage and

beauty she did not understand.

"Why not speak of it?" he asked quietly. "I am not ashamed of the fact

that I have no money. Such as money is, I shall make it some day, and I

shall not value it then any more than I do now. It is necessary, I

begin to see, but only that. Its only importance is the importance we

give to it: to keep straight with our kind; to justify our existence,

and," he continued, "to help the next man."

His face took a firmer expression. More than in his recitation of his

life he seemed to forget her. As he said so, his arms fell a little way

away from her--she grew cold--he seemed a stranger. Only for a moment,

however, for he turned, put out his arms, and drew her to him. He kissed

her as he had not kissed her yet, and after a few moments said--

"Mary, I bring you my talent, and my manhood, and my courage--nothing

else--and I want it to be enough for you."

She said that it was. That it was more than enough.

Fairfax sighed, his arms dropped, he smiled and looked at her, and

said--

"I wonder if it is?" He glanced round the room quietly, with an

arrogance of which he was unconscious. "You must give all this up,

Mary."

"Must I?" She flushed and laughed. "You mean to say you want me to come

to Bohemia?"

"I want you to live as I can live," he said, "share what I must have ...

that is, I should ask you that if you married me now ..."

He watched her face. It was still illuminated. Her love for him was too

vital to be touched by this proposition which she did not wholly

understand.

"Most men shrink," Fairfax said, "from taking the woman they love from

her luxuries. I believe that I shall not be poor very long. It will be a

struggle. If you marry me now, you will share it with me, otherwise ..."

He waited a moment.

And she repeated: "Otherwise, Antony?"

"I shall go away," he answered, "and not come back again until I am rich

and great."

CHAPTER XVII

After he had left her he was dazed and incredulous. His egoism, his

enthusiasm, his idea of his own self-sufficiency seemed preposterous. A

man in love should entertain no idea but the thought of the woman

herself. He began to chafe at poverty which he had assured her made no

difference to him. Did he wish to live again terrible years of sacrifice

and sordidness? If so, he could not hope a woman accustomed to luxury

would choose to share his struggle. He was absurd.

* * * * *

"Money," Dearborn said, regarding his shabby cuffs, "opens many doors. I

am inclined also to think that it shuts many doors. You remember the

Kingdom of Heaven and the needle's eye; but," he continued whimsically,

"I should not think of comparing Mrs. Faversham to a camel, Tony!"

"Don't be an ass," said Antony, proudly. "Mrs. Faversham and I feel

alike about it. Money will play no part in our mutual future." And, as

he said this, was sure neither of her nor of himself.

"Under which circumstances," said his companion, "I shall offer you

another cup of coffee and tell you my secret. Going with my play to

London is not the only one. I am in love. When you have drunk your

coffee we'll go home. Potowski is going to play for us, and he is going

to bring his wife at last."

The two friends sat that evening in a corner of a cafe on the Boulevard

Montparnasse. There were Bohemians around them at their table, and they

themselves were part of that happy, struggling world. Dearborn dropped

his voice, and said softly to Fairfax--

"And I have asked my little girl to come as well to-night to hear the

music."

Fairfax, instead of drinking his coffee, stared at Dearborn, and when

Dearborn murmured, "Nora Scarlet is her name. Isn't it a name for a

drama?" Fairfax stared still harder and repeated the girl's name under

his breath, flushing, but Dearborn did not observe it.

"I want you to see her, Tony; she is sweet and good."

"Bob," said Fairfax gravely, "you mean to tell me you have been falling

in love and carrying on a romance without telling me a word about it?"

Dearborn smiled. "To tell the truth, old man," he replied, "you have

been so absorbed; there was not room for two romances in the studio.

"I met her in the springtime, Gentle Annie," Dearborn said whimsically,

"and it was raining cats and dogs--but for me it rained just love and

Nora. We were both waiting for a 'bus. Neither one of us had an

umbrella. Now that you speak of it, Tony, I think we have never mended

that lack in our possessions. We climbed to the _imperiale_ together,

and the rain beat upon us both. We laughed, and I said to myself, a girl

that can laugh like that in a shower should be put aside for a rainy

day. We talked and we giggled. The rain stopped. We forgot to get down.

We went to the end of the line and still we forgot to get down. The

conductor collected a double fare, and afterward I took her home."

(Antony thought to himself, "Just what I did not do.")

"She is angelic, Tony, delightful, an artist's dream, a writer's

inspiration, and a poor man's fairy."

Fairfax laughed.

"Don't laugh, old man," said Dearborn simply. "I have never heard you

rave like this about the peerless Mary."

Fairfax said, "No. But then you talk better than I do." He shook

Dearborn's hand warmly. "You know I am most awfully glad, don't you?"

"I know I am," said Dearborn, lighting a cigarette.

He settled himself with a beautiful content, asking nothing better than

to go on rehearsing his love affair.

"We have been engaged a long time, Tony. It is only a question of how

little two people can dare to try to get on with, you know, and I have

determined to risk it."

As they went up the steps of the studio together, Fairfax said--

"She is coming to-night, Bob, you say? Does she know anything about me?"

At this Dearborn laughed aloud. "She knows a great deal about me, Tony.

My dear boy, do you think we have talked much about anything but each

other? Do you talk with Mrs. Faversham about me? Nora knows I live here

with a chum. She doesn't even know your name."

As Dearborn threw open the door they could hear Potowski playing softly

the old French ballad, "J'ai perdu ma tourterelle."

A woman sat by Potowski in a big chair, and the lamp on the piano shone

yellow upon her. When the two men entered the studio she rose, and

Potowski, still playing, said--

"Let me present, at last, my better half. Mes amis, la Comtesse

Potowski."

Dearborn greeted her enthusiastically, and Tony stood petrified. The

comtesse, more mistress of the moment than Tony was, put out one hand

and smiled, but she had turned very pale.

It was his Aunt Caroline....

"Mr. Rainsford," she lifted her brows, "I think I have seen you before."

Tony bowed over her hand and Potowski, still smiling and nodding,

cried--

"These are great men and geniuses, _ma cherie_. You have here two great

artists together. They both have wings on their shoulders. Before they

fly away from us and are lost on Olympus, be charming to them. Carolina,

_ma cherie_, they shall hear you sing."

Robert Dearborn put his hand on Potowski's shoulder and said--

"We love your husband, madame. He has been such a bully friend to us,

such a wonderful friend."

"Poof, my dear Bobbie," murmured Potowski.

("J'ai perdu ma tourterelle.")

Fairfax asked, looking directly at her, "Will you really sing for us,

Madame Potowski? Can you sing some old English ballad? We have not heard

a word of English for many a long day."

Potowski wandered softly into a familiar tune. He smiled over his

shoulder at his wife, and, standing by the piano, Caroline

Carew--Carolina Potowski--put her hands over her husband's on the keys

and indicated an accompaniment, humming.

"If you can, dear, I will sing Mr. Rainsford _this_."

Tony took his place on the divan.

Then Madame Potowski sang:

"Flow gently, sweet Afton."

In New York Tony had said, as he sat in the big Puritan parlour, that

her voice was divine. No one who has ever heard Carolina Potowski sing

"Flow gently, sweet Afton" can ever forget it. Tony covered his face

with his hands and said to himself, being an artist as well, "No matter

what she has done, it was worth it to produce such art as that."

"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes

Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise,

My Mary is asleep by your turbulent stream,

Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream."

Little Gardiner once more leaned against his arm; restless little Bella

in red, her hair down her back, slipped out of the room to read in

peace, and he sat there, a homeless stranger in a Northern city without

a cent of money in his pocket, and the desires of life and art shining

in his soul.

"Flow gently, sweet Afton."

He indistinctly heard Dearborn open the door. A woman slipped in and

went over and sat down by her lover. The two sat together holding hands,

and "Sweet Afton" flowed on, and nobody's dream was disturbed. Little

Gardiner slept his peaceful sleep in his child's grave; his mother slept

her sleep in a Southern cemetery; the Angel of Resurrection raised his

spotless wings over the city of the silent dead, and Antony's heart

swelled in his breast.

When the Comtesse Potowski stopped singing no one said a word. Her

husband played a few bars of Werther and she sang the "Love Letters."

Then, before she ceased, Antony was conscious that Nora Scarlet had

recognized him. Before any embarrassment could be between them, he went

over to her and took her hand, saying warmly--

"I am so glad, Miss Scarlet. Dearborn has told me of his good fortune.

He is the best fellow in the world, and I know how lucky he is," and

Nora Scarlet murmured something, with her eyes turned away from him.

Tony turned to Madame Potowski and said ardently, "You must let me come

to see you to-morrow. I want to thank you for this wonderful treat."

And when Potowski and his Aunt Caroline had gone, and when Dearborn had

taken Nora Scarlet home, Antony stood in the studio, which still

vibrated with the tones of the lovely voice. He had lived once again a

part of his old life. This was his mother's sister, and she had made

havoc of her home. He thought of little Bella's visit to him in Albany.

"Mother has done something perfectly terrible, Cousin Antony--something

a daughter is not supposed to know."

Well, the something perfectly terrible was, she had set herself free

from a man she did not love; that she was making Potowski happy; that

she had found her sphere and soared into it.

Fairfax tried in vain to think of himself now and Mary Faversham, but he

could not. The past rushed on him with its palpitating wings. He groaned

and stretched out his arms into the shadows of the room.

"There is something that chains me, holds me prisoner. I am wedded to

something--is it death and a tomb?"

CHAPTER XVIII

During the following weeks it seemed to him he was chasing his soul and

her own. In their daily intercourse--sweet, of course, tender, of

course--there was a constant sense of limitation. He wanted her to share

with him his love of the beautiful, but Mary Faversham was conventional.

He would have spent hours with her in the Louvre, hanging over

treasures, musing before pictures whose art he felt he could never

sufficiently make his own. Mrs. Faversham followed him closely, but

after a time watched the people. Whilst her lover--in love with all

beauty--remained transfixed over the contemplation of a petrified rose

found in the ruins of Pompeii, or intoxicated himself with the beauty of

an urn, she would interrupt his meditation by speaking to him of

unimportant things. She found resemblances in the little Grecian statues

to her friends in society. Tony sighed and relinquished seeing museums

with Mary. She patronized art with _largesse_ and generosity but he

discovered it was one way to her of spending money, an agreeable,

satisfying way to a woman of breeding and refinement.

The bewitching charm of her clothes, her great expenditures on herself,

made him open his blue eyes. Once he held her exquisitely shod foot in

his hand, admiring its beauty and its slenderness. On the polished

leather was the sparkle of her paste buckles; he admired the ephemeral

web of her silk stocking, and was ashamed that the thought should cross

his mind as to what this lovely foot represented of extravagance. But he

had been with her when she bought the buckles on the Rue de la Paix; he

knew the price they cost. Was the money making him sordid--hypercritical,

unkind?

Life for six months whirled round him. Mary Faversham dazzled and

bewitched him, charmed and flattered him. Their engagement had not been

made public. He ceased to work; he was at her beck and call; he went

with her everywhere. At her house, in her box at the opera, he met all

Paris. She was hardly ever alone with him; he made one of a group.

Nevertheless, they were talked about. Several orders for busts were the

outcome of his meeting fashionable Paris; but he did not work. Toward

March he received word from America that his bas-relief under the name

of Thomas Rainsford had won the ten thousand dollar prize. He felt like

a prince. For some singular reason he told no one, not even Dearborn. In

writing to him the committee had told him that according to the

contracts the money would not be forthcoming until July. He had gone

through so many bitter disappointments in his life that he did not want

in the minds of his friends to anticipate this payment and be

disappointed anew.

Among his fellow-workers in the Barye studio was the son of a

millionaire pork-packer from Chicago. The young man took a tremendous

liking to Antony. With a certain perspicacity, the rich young fellow

divined much of his new friend's needs. He came to the studio, to their

different reunions, and chummed heartily with Dearborn and Fairfax.

Peterson was singularly lacking in talent and tremendously

over-furnished with heart. One day, as they worked side by side in the

studio of the big man, Peterson watched Antony's handling of a tiger's

head.

"By Jove!" cried the Chicagoan, "you are simply great--you are simply

great! I wonder if you would be furious with me if I said something to

you that is on my mind?"

The something on the simple young man's mind was that he wanted to lend

Fairfax a sum of money, to be paid back when the sculptor saw fit. After

a moment's hesitation Antony accepted the loan, making it one-third as

much as the big-hearted chap had suggested. Fairfax set July as the date

of payment, when his competitive money should come in. He borrowed just

enough to keep him in food and clothes for the following months.

There were no motors in Paris then. In the mornings he drove with Mrs.

Faversham to the Bois and limped by her side in the _allees_, whilst the

worldly people stared at the distinguished, conspicuous couple. One day

Barye himself stopped them, and to the big man Antony presented Mrs.

Faversham who did not happen to know her fiance's chief.

Fairfax looked at her critically as she laughed and was sweet and

gracious. Carriages filed past them; shining equipages, the froth and

wine of life flowed around them under the trees, whose chestnut torches

were lit with spring.

Barye said to Antony, "Not working, are you, Rainsford? _C'est

dommage_", and turning to Mrs. Faversham he added, nodding, "_C'est

dommage_."

Antony heard the words throughout the day, and they haunted him--_c'est

dommage_. Barye's voice had been light, but the sculptor knew the

underlying ring in it. There is, indeed, no greater pity than for a man

of talent not to work. That day he lunched with her on the terrace of

her hotel overlooking the rose garden. Fairfax ate scarcely anything.

Below his eyes spread a _parterre_ of perfect purple heliotropes. The

roses were beginning to bloom on their high trees, and the moist earth

odours from the garden he had thought so exquisite came to him

delicately on the warm breeze. But this day the place seemed oppressive,

shut in by its high iron walls. In the corner of the garden, the

gardener, an old man in blue overalls, bent industriously over his

potting, and to Antony he seemed the single worthy figure. At the table

he was surrounded by idlers and millionaires. He judged them bitterly

to-day, brutally and unreasonably, and hastily looked toward Mrs.

Faversham, his future life's companion, hoping that something in her

expression or in her would disenchant him from the growing horror that

was threatening to destroy his peace of mind. Mary Faversham was all in

white; from her ears hung the pearls given her by her husband, whom she

had never loved; around her neck hung a creamy rope of pearls; she was

discussing with her neighbour the rising value of different jewels. It

seemed to them both a vital and interesting subject.

It was the end of luncheon; the fragrance of the strawberries, the

fragrance of the roses came heavily to Antony's nostrils.

His aunt, the Comtesse Potowski, sat at his right. She was saying--

"My dear boy, when are you going to be married? There is nothing like a

happy marriage, Tony. A woman may have children, you know, and be

miserable; she has not found the right man. I hope you will be very

happy, Tony."

Some one asked her to sing, and Madame Potowski, languid, slim, with

unmistakable distinction, rose to play. She suggested his mother to

Antony. She sang selections from the opera then in vogue. Tony stood

near the piano and listened. Her voice always affected him deeply, and

as he had responded to it in the old days in New York he responded now,

and there was a sense of misery at his heart as he listened to her

singing the music of old times when he had been unable to carry out his

ideals because of his suffering and poverty.

There was now a sense of soul discontent, of pitiless remorse. As if

again to disenchant himself, he glanced at Mary as she, too, listened.

Back of her in the vases were high branches of lilac, white and

delicate, with the first beauty of spring; she sat gracefully indolent,

smoking a cigarette, evidently dreaming of pleasant things. To Antony

there was a blank wall now between him and his visions. How unreal

everything but money seemed, and his soul stifled and his senses numbed.

In this atmosphere of riches and luxury what place had he? Penniless,

unknown, his stature stunted--for it had been dwarfed by his idleness.

Again he heard Barye say, "_C'est dommage_."

His aunt's voice, bright as silver, filled the room. He believed she was

singing for him expressly, for she had chosen an English ballad--"Roll

on, silvery moon." Again, with a sadness which all imaginative and

poetic natures understand, his present slipped away. He was back in

Albany in the cab of his engine; the air bellied in his sleeve, the air

of home whipped in his veins--he saw the fields as the engine flashed by

them, whitening under the moonlight as the silvery moon rolled on! How

he had sweated to keep himself a man, how he had toiled to keep his hope

up and to live his life well, what a fight he had made in order that his

visions might declare themselves to him!

When his aunt ceased to sing and people gathered around her, Tony rose

and limped over to Mrs. Faversham. He put out his hand.

"I must go, Mary," he said. "I have some work to do this afternoon."

She smiled at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Tony."

The others had moved away to speak to the Comtesse Potowski, and they

were alone.

"I am becoming ridiculous," said Antony, "that is true, but it is not

because I am going to work."

She did not seem to notice anything in his gravity. "Don't forget we are

dining and driving out to Versailles; don't forget, Tony."

Fairfax made no response. On his face was a pitiless look, but Mrs.

Faversham, happy in her successful breakfast and enchanted with the

music, did not read his expression.

"I will come in to-morrow, Mary."

Mrs. Faversham, turning to a man who had come up to her, still

understood nothing.

"Don't forget, Tony,"--she nodded at him--"this afternoon."

Antony bade her good-bye. He looked back at her across the room, and she

seemed to him then the greatest stranger of them all.

CHAPTER XIX

He went upstairs to his atelier with a strange eager hammering at his

heart. For several weeks the studio had been, for him, little more than

an ante-chamber--a dressing-room where he had made careful toilettes

before going to Mrs. Faversham. His constant attendance upon a beautiful

woman had turned him into something of a dandy, and the purchase of fine

clothes and linen had eaten well into his borrowed money, which had been

frankly used by Dearborn when in need.

"Dearborn, wear any of my things you like, only don't get ink spots on

them, for God's sake!"

And Dearborn had responded, "I don't need to go courting in

four-hundred-franc suits, Tony; Nora is my kind, you know."

And when Antony had flashed out, "What the devil do you mean?" Dearborn

explained--

"Only that Nora and I are poor together. I didn't intend to be rude, old

man."