ive in the Etoile quarter,--in a very respectable
hotel-pension on the Rue Galilee. It was so much healthier in that
quarter, every one said, more comfortable for a wife, who must be left
to herself for long hours each day. They had lost sight of the Reddons
from the moment they entered the Paris train, for the Reddons, having
second-class tickets, were forced to wait for a slower train, which they
didn't seem to mind as it gave them a chance to see the little town and
lunch in a _cabaret_ instead of paying for an expensive meal on the
wagon-restaurant as the Bragdons did.

Bragdon enrolled himself among the seventy or eighty students at
Julian's and also shared a studio near the _Pont des Invalides_ with
another American, where he worked afternoons by himself. He plunged into
his painting very earnestly, realizing all that he had to accomplish.
But he lived the life of the alien in France, as so many of his
fellow-students did, preserving a stout Americanism in the midst of
Paris. Thanks to an education in an American college, after eight years'
study of foreign languages he could read easy French, but he could
scarcely order a meal in the language. And he did not try to learn
French, like most of the young Americans "studying" in Paris. What was
the use? he said. He did not intend to live his life there. In truth, he
disdained the French, like the others, and all things French, including
most of their art. His marriage had emphasized this Americanism. Like
most of his countrymen he regarded every Frenchman as a would-be seducer
of his neighbor's wife, and every Frenchwoman as a possible wanton; all
things French as either corrupt or frivolous or hopelessly behind the
times.

He inspired Milly to some extent with these ideas, though she was of a
more curious and trusting nature. He did not like to have her go out in
Paris even in the daytime unaccompanied, and as after the first weeks of
settlement in their new environment he was very busy all day, Milly
found herself more or less secluded and idle from nine in the morning
until five in the afternoon. It was worse than in the flat in Chicago!
For there she could go out when she pleased, and had some social
distraction. Here they knew almost nobody.

The hotel-pension on the Rue Galilee was frequented by the quieter sort
of middle-aged English, and a few American mothers with their children,
"doing Europe." Hardly a word of French was spoken within its doors, and
as