aking over the
asphalt on roller skates saw a lady in a long fur coat, and short,
high-heeled shoes, alight from a French car and pace slowly about the
Square, holding her muff to her chin. This spot, at least, had changed
very little, she reflected; the same trees, the same fountain, the white
arch, and over yonder, Garibaldi, drawing the sword for freedom. There,
just opposite her, was the old red brick house.

"Yes, that is the place," she was thinking. "I can smell the carpets now,
and the dog,--what was his name? That grubby bathroom at the end of the
hall, and that dreadful Hedger--still, there was something about him, you
know--" She glanced up and blinked against the sun. From somewhere in the
crowded quarter south of the Square a flock of pigeons rose, wheeling
quickly upward into the brilliant blue sky. She threw back her head,
pressed her muff closer to her chin, and watched them with a smile of
amazement and delight. So they still rose, out of all that dirt and noise
and squalor, fleet and silvery, just as they used to rise that summer
when she was twenty and went up in a balloon on Coney Island!

Alphonse opened the door and tucked her robes about her. All the way down
town her mind wandered from Cerro de Pasco, and she kept smiling and
looking up at the sky.

When she had finished her business with the broker, she asked him to look
in the telephone book for the address of M. Gaston Jules, the picture
dealer, and slipped the paper on which he wrote it into her glove. It was
five o'clock when she reached the French Galleries, as they were called.
On entering she gave the attendant her card, asking him to take it to M.
Jules. The dealer appeared very promptly and begged her to come into his
private office, where he pushed a great chair toward his desk for her and
signalled his secretary to leave the room.

"How good your lighting is in here," she observed, glancing about. "I met
you at Simon's studio, didn't I? Oh, no! I never forget anybody who
interests me." She threw her muff on his writing table and sank into the
deep chair. "I have come to you for some information that's not in my
line. Do you know anything about an American painter named Hedger?"

He took the seat opposite her. "Don Hedger? But, certainly! There are
some very interesting things of his in an exhibition at V----'s. If you
would care to--"

She held up her hand. "No, no. I've no time to go to exhibitions. Is he a
man of any importanc