papers. The young man went up the Avenue without looking back.

"Well, what are you going to do today? Shampoo this animal all morning?"
Eden enquired teasingly.

Hedger made room for her on the seat. "No, at twelve o'clock I'm going
out to Coney Island. One of my models is going up in a balloon this
afternoon. I've often promised to go and see her, and now I'm going."

Eden asked if models usually did such stunts. No, Hedger told her, but
Molly Welch added to her earnings in that way. "I believe," he added,
"she likes the excitement of it. She's got a good deal of spirit. That's
why I like to paint her. So many models have flaccid bodies."

"And she hasn't, eh? Is she the one who comes to see you? I can't help
hearing her, she talks so loud."

"Yes, she has a rough voice, but she's a fine girl. I don't suppose you'd
be interested in going?"

"I don't know," Eden sat tracing patterns on the asphalt with the end of
her parasol. "Is it any fun? I got up feeling I'd like to do something
different today. It's the first Sunday I've not had to sing in church. I
had that engagement for breakfast at the Brevoort, but it wasn't very
exciting. That chap can't talk about anything but himself."

Hedger warmed a little. "If you've never been to Coney Island, you ought
to go. It's nice to see all the people; tailors and bar-tenders and
prize-fighters with their best girls, and all sorts of folks taking a
holiday."

Eden looked sidewise at him. So one ought to be interested in people of
that kind, ought one? He was certainly a funny fellow. Yet he was never,
somehow, tiresome. She had seen a good deal of him lately, but she kept
wanting to know him better, to find out what made him different from men
like the one she had just left--whether he really was as different as he
seemed. "I'll go with you," she said at last, "if you'll leave that at
home." She pointed to Caesar's flickering ears with her sunshade.

"But he's half the fun. You'd like to hear him bark at the waves when
they come in."

"No, I wouldn't. He's jealous and disagreeable if he sees you talking to
any one else. Look at him now."

"Of course, if you make a face at him. He knows what that means, and he
makes a worse face. He likes Molly Welch, and she'll be disappointed if I
don't bring him."

Eden said decidedly that he couldn't take both of them. So at twelve
o'clock when she and Hedger got on the boat at Desbrosses street, Caesar
was lying on his pallet,