Hartwell, though born abroad, was simply, as every one knew, "from
America." He seemed, almost more than any other one living man, to
mean all of it--from ocean to ocean. When he was in Paris, his
studio was always open to the seven of us who were there that
evening, and we intruded upon his leisure as often as we thought
permissible.

Although we were within the terms of the easiest of all intimacies,
and although the great sculptor, even when he was more than usually
silent, was at all times the most gravely cordial of hosts, yet, on
that long remembered evening, as the sunlight died on the burnished
brown of the horse-chestnuts below the windows, a perceptible
dullness yawned through our conversation.

We were, indeed, somewhat low in spirit, for one of our number,
Charley Bentley, was leaving us indefinitely, in response to an
imperative summons from home. To-morrow his studio, just across the
hall from Hartwell's, was to pass into other hands, and Bentley's
luggage was even now piled in discouraged resignation before his
door. The various bales and boxes seemed literally to weigh upon us
as we sat in his neighbor's hospitable rooms, drearily putting in
the time until he should leave us to catch the ten o'clock express
for Dieppe.

The day we had got through very comfortably, for Bentley made it the
occasion of a somewhat pretentious luncheon at Maxim's. There had
been twelve of us at table, and the two young Poles were thirsty,
the Gascon so fabulously entertaining, that it was near upon five
o'clock when we put down our liqueur glasses for the last time, and
the red, perspiring waiter, having pocketed the reward of his
arduous and protracted services, bowed us affably to the door,
flourishing his napkin and brushing back the streaks of wet, black
hair from his rosy forehead. Our guests having betaken themselves
belated to their respective engagements, the rest of us returned
with Bentley--only to be confronted by the depressing array before
his door. A glance about his denuded rooms had sufficed to chill the
glow of the afternoon, and we fled across the hall in a body and
begged Lyon Hartwell to take us in.

Bentley had said very little about it, but we all knew what it meant
to him to be called home. Each of us knew what it would mean to
himself, and each had felt something of that quickened sense of
opportunity which comes at seeing another man in any way counted out
of the race. Never had the game seeme