e, that the young fellow had
more than half a mind to destroy the lot before the return of the
Master. During the last week he had a comrade, a great, soft-eyed,
curly-locked Italian, who didn't speak a word of English, who arrived
gentle as an ox to put himself under the yoke of labour. Antony, thanks
to his keenness and his gift for languages, and his knowledge of French,
made out something of what he was and from where. He had been born in
Carrara and was a worker in marble in his own land, and had come to work
on the fountain for the music room in the Field palace.

"The fountain!" Fairfax tumbled over his sketches and showed one to his
brown-eyed friend, who told him rapidly that it was "divinely
beautiful," and asked to see the clay model.

None had been made.

The same night, Fairfax wrote to Cedersholm that he had begun a model of
the fountain, and in the following days was up to his ears and eyes in
clay.

* * * * *

The block of marble arrived from Italy, and Fairfax superintended its
difficult entry by derrick through the studio window. He restrained
"Benvenuto Cellini," as he called his comrade, from cutting into the
marble, and the Italian used to come and sit idle, for he had no work to
do, and waited Cedersholm's orders. He used to come and sit and stare at
his block of marble and sing pleasantly--

"Aria pura
Cielo azuro
Mia Maddelena,"

and jealously watch Fairfax who _could_ work. Fairfax could and did, in
a long blouse made for him by Miss Mitty, after his directions. With a
twenty-five cent book of phrases, Fairfax in no time mastered enough
Italian to talk with his companion, and his own baritone was sweet
enough to blend with Benvenuto Cellini's "Mia Maddelena," and other
songs of the same character, and he exulted in the companionship of the
young man, and talked at him and over him, and dreamed aloud to him, and
Benvenuto, who had only the dimmest idea of what the frenzy meant--not
so dim, possibly, for he knew it was the ravings of art--supplied the
"bellisimos" and "grandiosos," and felt the spirit of the moment, and
was young with Fairfax, if not as much of a soul or a talent.

The model for the fountain was completed before Cedersholm's return.
After a month's rest under the palms of Florida, the sculptor lounged
into the studio, much as he might have strolled up a Paris boulevard and
ordered a liqueur at a round table before some fa