s since I have seen him. He is
not of a punctual habit--no! How often have I waked in the blackness
of night, upon a frightful uproar of the bell, to admit him, and he
making observations at the top of his voice that would cause a fish
to blush! An Italian, M'sieur--yes! But all the same it astonishes no
one when he is away for two days."

"The Italians are like that," generalized Rufin unscrupulously. "His
door is unlocked, Madame, and there is a picture in his room which
is--well, valuable."

"He sold the key," lamented Madame, "and the catches of the window,
and the bell-push, and a bucket of mine which I had neglected to
watch. And he called me a she-camel when I remonstrated."

"In Italian it is a mere jest," Rufin assured her. "See, Madame, this
is my card, which I beg you to give him. I am obliged to leave Paris
to-morrow, but on my return I shall have the honor to call on him.
And this is a five-franc piece!"

The big coin seemed to work on the concierge like a powerful drug.
She choked noisily and was for the while almost enthusiastic.

"He shall have the card," she promised. "I swear it! After all,
artists must have their experiences. Doubtless the monsieur who
resides above is a great painter?"

"A very great painter," replied Rufin.

His work, during the next three weeks, exiled him to a green solitude
of flat land whose horizons were ridged by poplars growing beside
roads laid down as though with a ruler, so straight they were as they
sliced across the rich levels. It was there he effected the vital
work on his great picture, "Promesse," a revelation of earth gravid
with life, of the opulent promise and purpose of spring. It is the
greater for what lodged in his mind of the picture he had seen in the
Montmartre tenement. It was constant in his thought, the while he
noted on his canvas the very texture of the year's early light; it
aided his brush. In honesty and humbleness of heart, as he worked, he
acknowledged a debt to the unknown Italian who stole the key of the
room to sell, and called his concierge a she-camel.

It was a debt he knew he could pay. He, Rufin, whose work was in the
Luxembourg, in galleries in America, in Russia, in the palaces of
kings, could assure the painter of Montmartre of fame. He went to
seek him on the evening of his return to the city.

The fat concierge preserved still her burst and overripe appearance,
and at the sight of him she was so moved that she rose from her