eceived protection
from painters of more settled respectability than their own. It was
extraordinary how difficult these things were in Paris. Lawson would
become acquainted with some young thing and make an appointment; for
twenty-four hours he would be all in a flutter and describe the charmer at
length to everyone he met; but she never by any chance turned up at the
time fixed. He would come to Gravier's very late, ill-tempered, and
exclaim:

"Confound it, another rabbit! I don't know why it is they don't like me.
I suppose it's because I don't speak French well, or my red hair. It's too
sickening to have spent over a year in Paris without getting hold of
anyone."

"You don't go the right way to work," said Flanagan.

He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to narrate, and though they
took leave not to believe all he said, evidence forced them to acknowledge
that he did not altogether lie. But he sought no permanent arrangement. He
only had two years in Paris: he had persuaded his people to let him come
and study art instead of going to college; but at the end of that period
he was to return to Seattle and go into his father's business. He had made
up his mind to get as much fun as possible into the time, and demanded
variety rather than duration in his love affairs.

"I don't know how you get hold of them," said Lawson furiously.

"There's no difficulty about that, sonny," answered Flanagan. "You just go
right in. The difficulty is to get rid of them. That's where you want
tact."

Philip was too much occupied with his work, the books he was reading, the
plays he saw, the conversation he listened to, to trouble himself with the
desire for female society. He thought there would be plenty of time for
that when he could speak French more glibly.

It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss Wilkinson, and during
his first weeks in Paris he had been too busy to answer a letter she had
written to him just before he left Blackstable. When another came, knowing
it would be full of reproaches and not being just then in the mood for
them, he put it aside, intending to open it later; but he forgot and did
not run across it till a month afterwards, when he was turning out a
drawer to find some socks that had no holes in them. He looked at the
unopened letter with dismay. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson had
suffered a good deal, and it made him feel a brute; but she had probably
got over the suffering by now,