and
madness. There was something at once pathetic and sublime in his
adaptability to the broken suits of fortune. He was learning what
every man learns sooner or later--to play the hand that is dealt, even
in the face of a losing game.

Deep within him he found two opposing currents struggling for
mastery--one an overwhelming tide of disillusionment, the other a
faith in things hitherto withheld. Against the uncloaked figures of
Helen Starratt and Hilmer loomed Ginger and Monet. Did life always
yield compensations, if one had the wit to discern them? In the still
watches of the night, when some fleeting sound had waked him, he used
to think of Ginger as he had thought when a child of some intangible
and remote vision that he could sense, but not define. Would he ever
see her again? Suddenly, one night, he realized that he did not even
know her name... And Monet, who slept so quietly upon the cot next to
him--what would he have done without his companionship? He used to
raise himself on his elbow at times and look in the ghostly light of
morning at Monet's face, white and immobile, the thin and shapely lips
parted ever so slightly, and marvel at the bland and childlike faith
that was the basis of this almost breathless and inaudible sleep. Fred
had made friendships in his life, warm, hand-clasping,
shoulder-thumping friendships, but they had been of gradual unfolding.
Never before had anyone walked full-grown into his affections.

On the third afternoon, sitting in the thick shade of a gracious tree,
Monet had told Fred something of his story. He was of mixed
breed--French and Italian, with a bit of Irish that had made him
blue-eyed, and traces of English and some Dutch. A brood of races that
were forever at war within him. And he had been a musician in the
bargain, and this in the face of an implacable father who dealt in
hides and tallow. There had been all the weakness and flaming and
_naivete_ of a potential artist ground under the heel of a relentless
sire. His mother was long since dead. The father had attempted to
force the stream of desire from music to business. He had succeeded,
after a fashion, but the youth had learned to escape from the dull
pain of his slavery into a rosy and wine-red Eden. ... Three times he
had been sent to Fairview "to kick the nonsense out of him!" to use
his father's words. He was not embittered nor overwhelmed, but he was
passive, stubbornly passive, as if he had all a lifetime to c