s.

The unbounded delight, the disinterested pride of the Hemingways,
couldn't have been greater had he been their son. Mrs. Hemingway
gave a brilliant entertainment in his honor, and he was feted and
made much of. Young ladies who danced divinely found his stork-like
hopping pleasing, and his stammering French delightful. This
charming Monsieur Champneys, you see, was not only invested with the
glamour of art; he was the heir of an American millionaire! Ah, the
dear young man!

The picture was sold to a Spanish nobleman, who said it reminded him
of Velasquez's "AEsop"; he was so delighted with the painter's power
that he commissioned Peter to portray his own long, pale, melancholy
visage. Whereupon the two Checkleighs and Stocks called loudly for
a proper celebration, and Peter honored their clamorous demand. It
was a memorable affair, graced by the Quartier's darlingest models,
who had long since voted M'sieu Champnees a _bon garcon_. A Spanish
student, in a velvet coat and with long black hair, insisted upon
charcoaling mustachios and imperial upon his host's countenance, in
honor of his countryman who had distinguished himself as a patron of
art. Later, a laughing girl whose blue-black hair was banded
Madonna-wise around a head considerably otherwise, washed it off
with a table napkin dipped in wine. She sat on his knee to perform
the operation, scanned his clean face with satisfaction, and taking
him by the ears as by handles, kissed him gaily. Then she went back
to her own _cher ami_, who wasn't in the least disturbed.

"It is like kissing thy maiden aunt, Jacques," she told him. "Now,
with thee--" They looked at each other eloquently, and Peter
Champneys, whose eyes had followed the girl, smiled crookedly. An
unaccountable gloom descended upon him. All these lusty young men
shouting and laughing around him, all these handsome, ardent young
women, snatched what joy from life they could; they lived their
hour, knowing how brief that hour must be. They ate to-day, starved
to-morrow; but they were rich because they loved, because they
laughed, because theirs was the passionate unforced comradeship, the
intoxicating joy of youth. Peter Champneys, whose good luck was
being celebrated, looked at his penniless, hilarious comrades, and
twisted a smile of desperate gaiety to his lips. He had never in
his life felt more utterly alone.

The affair ended at six o'clock the next morning, in a last glad,
mad romp up the B