red of it--perhaps it was
out of fashion; if so, she would never wear it. She might catch cold.

He was not a prompt man, but he went at once to the telephone and gave
orders to a shop in Bond Street that would result in a collection of
fur-lined cloaks being sent for her choice that evening. This would
please her; she would smile and try them on. Besides, it would prevent
her catching cold.

CHAPTER VI

HARRY'S ENTERTAINMENT

Van Buren, who was a business man, was an idealist; while Harry de
Freyne, the artist--was, emphatically, not.

Van Buren had been brought up on Thackeray and Dickens, above all on old
pictures from _Punch_; Du Maurier's drawings enjoyed at an early age had
made him romantic about everything connected with London. As soon as he
was able to leave his bank in New York--in fact, the moment he had
retired from business--he had realised his dream and come to live in
London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything
delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry,
who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish
Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor
about the obvious things; he was a little ashamed of his money, but he
did not worship rank and titles; it was Intellect--but Intellect that
had the stamp of fashion--that held a glamour for him. So did everything
that he supposed to be modern, previous, and up-to-date. No one could
ever, whether in New York or in London, have been in life less modern
than poor Van Buren, though he was eminently contemporary and perhaps
even in advance in matters connected with business. For business he had
genius, and yet, curiously, no passion; he was unconsciously brilliant
on the subject; it was hereditary. But in his innermost heart he
believed that it was vulgar to be an American millionaire! And he had a
childish horror of vulgarity, and an innocent belief that an Englishman
who had been to Eton and Oxford and who was _dans le mouvement_, smart
and good-looking, and had deserted diplomacy for art, must of necessity
be refined, superior, cultured, everything that Van Buren wanted to be.

Of course he soon found out that Harry was frightfully hard up, and in
the most delicate manner imaginable--a delicacy rather wasted on his
friend--implored, as a special favour, to be allowed to be his banker.
But Harry had refused, having vague ideas of much more important extent