ng time ago--fifteen years ago."

Eugene smiled beatifically. This was a great compliment. He could not
help liking Madame Bourgoche for it. She was bright, no doubt of that,
or she would not be able to make such a comparison. Angela drew from
him, as before, that her domesticity and housekeeping skill was as
important as anything else in the world, and having done this was
satisfied and cheerful once more. Eugene thought how little art or
conditions or climate or country altered the fundamental characteristics
of human nature. Here he was in Paris, comparatively well supplied with
money, famous, or in process of becoming so, and quarreling with Angela
over little domestic idiosyncrasies, just as in Washington Square.

By late September Eugene had most of his Paris sketches so well laid in
that he could finish them anywhere. Some fifteen were as complete as
they could be made. A number of others were nearly so. He decided that
he had had a profitable summer. He had worked hard and here was the work
to show for it--twenty-six canvases which were as good, in his judgment,
as those he had painted in New York. They had not taken so long, but he
was surer of himself--surer of his method. He parted reluctantly with
all the lovely things he had seen, believing that this collection of
Parisian views would be as impressive to Americans as had been his New
York views. M. Arkquin for one, and many others, including the friends
of Deesa and Dula were delighted with them. The former expressed the
belief that some of them might be sold in France.

Eugene returned to America with Angela, and learning that he might stay
in the old studio until December first, settled down to finish the work
for his exhibition there.

The first suggestion that Eugene had that anything was wrong with him,
aside from a growing apprehensiveness as to what the American people
would think of his French work, was in the fall, when he began to
imagine--or perhaps it was really true--that coffee did not agree with
him. He had for several years now been free of his old-time
complaint,--stomach trouble; but gradually it was beginning to reappear
and he began to complain to Angela that he was feeling an irritation
after his meals, that coffee came up in his throat. "I think I'll have
to try tea or something else if this doesn't stop," he observed. She
suggested chocolate and he changed to that, but this merely resulted in
shifting the ill to another quarter. He