es, his pleasures, had done him good. His
face was something fuller. He had come home early from dining with Mrs.
Faversham, and in his evening dress there was an elegance about him that
added to his natural distinction. In the lapel of his coat drooped a few
violets from the _boutonniere_ that had been placed by his plate.

"Cedersholm is coming next week." He lit a fresh cigarette.

"Well," returned Dearborn, coolly, "he is neither the deluge nor the
earthquake, but he may be the plague. What has he got to do with you,
old man?"

"She is going to marry him."

"That," said Dearborn with spirit, "is rotten. Now, I will grant you
that, Tony. It's rotten for her. Things have got so mixed up in your
scenario that you cannot frankly go and tell her what a hog he is. That
is what ought to be done, though. She ought to know what kind of a cheat
and poor sort she is going to marry. In real life or drama the simple
thing never happens." Dearborn smiled finely. "She ought to know, but
you can't tell her."

"No," said his friend slowly, "nor would I. But neither can I meet him
in her house or anywhere else. I think I should strike him."

"You didn't strike him, though," said Dearborn, meaningly, "when you had
a good impersonal chance."

"I wish I had."

"I thought you told me they were all going to Rome?"

"Mrs. Faversham doesn't want to go."

"Ah," murmured Dearborn, nodding, "she doesn't."

"No." Fairfax did not seem to observe his friend's tone. "She is
mightily set on having me meet Cedersholm. She wants to have him
patronize me, help me!" He laughed dryly and walked up and down the
studio into the cold, away from the fire, and then back to Dearborn in
his dressing-gown and slippers. "Patronize me, encourage me, pat me on
the back--put me in the way of meeting men of the world of art and
letters, possibly work with him. She has all sorts of kindly patronizing
schemes. But she doesn't know that I have been hungry and cold, and have
been housed and fed by her money. Perhaps she does, though," he cried
furiously to Dearborn. "No doubt she does. Do you think she does, Bob?"

"No, no--don't be an ass, Tony, old man."

"You see, now don't you, that I can't stay in Paris, that I can't meet
that man and knock him down--not tell her that I am not the poor
insignificant creature that she thinks, that without me Cedersholm could
not have whipped up his old brain and his tired imagination to have done
the work that brough