rly destitute and were really clad and fed by their visions and their
dreams.

"You see," he said one day, shortly, to Dearborn, when the silence
between the quays and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne had grown
intolerable to him, "you see how indifferent she is. She doesn't know
what has become of me. For all she knows I may be drowned in the Seine."

"Or imprisoned for debt," said Dearborn, cheerfully, "that's more
likely. The tailor doesn't believe you have gone to London, Fairfax. Try
a more congenial place, Tony. Let it be Monte Carlo next time--every one
goes there sooner or later."

When he came back from Versailles he told Dearborn nothing about his
escapade in detail, simply mentioning the fact that he had taken out a
little girl to spend the day in the woods and that she had bored him in
the end, and that he had had the misfortune to meet Mrs. Faversham
unexpectedly.

Dearborn was one of those subtle spirits who do not need to be told
everything. He rated Antony for playing what he called an ungallant part
to the little Bohemian.

"You say her hair was like chrysanthemums and that she had violet eyes?
Why, she is a priceless treasure, Tony! How could you desert her?"

And several times Dearborn tried to extract something more about the
deserted little girl from his friend, but it was in vain.

"I am sorry," Dearborn said. "We need women, Tony--we need to see the
flutter of their dresses, to watch them come and go in this little room.
By Jove, I often want to open the door and invite up the concierge, the
concierge's wife, his aunt 'and children three' or any, or all of Paris
who would come and infuse new life into us. Anything that is real flesh
and blood, to chase for a moment visions and dreams away and let us
touch real hands."

"You don't go out enough, old man."

"And you went out too much, Fairfax. It's not going out--I want some one
to come in. I want to see the studio peopled. You have grown so morose
and I have become such a navvy that our points of view will be false the
first thing we know."

The snow had been falling lightly. There was a little fringe of it along
the sill, and toward sunset it had turned cold, and under the winter fog
the sun hung like an orange ball behind a veil. The Seine flowed tawny
and yellow under their eyes, as they stood together talking in the
window.

Fairfax was in his painting clothes, the playwright in his beloved
dressing-gown that Fairfax had not the hea