ul spring of their youth they even laughed
at the previous day's disappointment. Ah! what a claque it was, after
all! For himself, he, Ostrander, would much rather see that satin-faced
Parisian girl who had got the prize smirking at the critics from the
boards of the Grand Opera than his countrywoman! The Conservatoire
settled things for Paris, but Paris wasn't the world! America would
come to the fore yet in art of all kinds--there was a free academy
there now--there should be a Conservatoire of its own. Of course, Paris
schooling and Paris experience weren't to be despised in art; but, thank
heaven! she had THAT, and no directors could take it from her! This and
much more, until, comparing notes, they suddenly found that they were
both free for that day. Why should they not take advantage of that rare
weather and rarer opportunity to make a little suburban excursion? But
where? There was the Bois, but that was still Paris. Fontainebleau? Too
far; there were always artists sketching in the forest, and he would
like for that day to "sink the shop." Versailles? Ah, yes! Versailles!

Thither they went. It was not new to either of them. Ostrander knew
it as an artist and as an American reader of that French historic
romance--a reader who hurried over the sham intrigues of the Oeil de
Boeuf, the sham pastorals of the Petit Trianon, and the sham heroics of
a shifty court, to get to Lafayette. Helen knew it as a child who had
dodged these lessons from her patriotic father, but had enjoyed the
woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly the restaurant at the
park gates. That day they took it like a boy and girl,--with the amused,
omniscient tolerance of youth for a past so inferior to the present.
Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far
superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled
through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her
fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the
Louvre. Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the
one-armed soldier-painter!

All this was as yet free from either sentiment or passion, and was only
the frank pride of friendship. But, oddly enough, their mere presence
and companionship seemed to excite in others that tenderness they had
not yet felt themselves. Family groups watched the handsome pair in
their innocent confidences, and, with French exuberant recognition of
sentime