followed cleanliness of thought and person
all his life. I began to have a sneaking admiration for the man. I
beheld in its openness that which I had often seen pierce through
Paragot's travesty of mountebankery or rags, but which singularly
enough seemed hidden beneath his conventional garb--the inborn and
incommunicable quality of the high-bred gentleman. I set to dreaming of
it and scheming out a portrait in which that essential quality could be
expressed; whereby I played the fool with my hand and incurred the mild
rebuke of my adversary, as she repiqued and capoted me and triumphantly
declared the game.

There was a short, general conversation. Then Major Walters, declining
the offer of whisky and soda in the dining-room, took his leave. Paragot
accompanied him to the front door. When he returned, Mrs. Rushworth
retired, as she always did after her game, and Joanna instead of
remaining with us for an hour, as usual, pleaded fatigue and went to
bed.

"Master," said I, boyishly full of my new idea, "do you think Major
Walters would sit to me? I don't mean as a commission--of course I
couldn't ask him--but for practice. I should like to paint him as a
knight in armour."

"Why this lunatic notion?" asked my master.

I explained. He looked at me for some time very seriously. There was a
touch of pain in his tired blue eyes.

"You are right, my little Asticot," he said, "and I was wrong. My
perception is growing blunt. I regarded our friend as having fallen out
of the War Office box of tin soldiers. Your vision has been keener.
Breed counts for much; but for it to have full value there must be the
_life_ as well. All the same, the notion of asking Major Walters to pose
to you in a suit of armour is lunatic, and the sooner you finish Mrs.
Rushworth and get back to Janot's the better. There is also Blanquette
who must be bored to death in the Rue des Saladiers, with no one but
Narcisse to bear her company."

He put a cigarette into his mouth, but for some time did not light it
although he held a match ready to strike in his fingers. His thoughts
held him.

"My son," he said at last, "I would give the eyes out of my head to have
my violin."

"Why, Master?" I asked.

"Because," said he, "when one is afflicted with a divine despair, there
is nothing for it like fiddling it out of the system."

CHAPTER XXI

PARIS again; Janot's; the organized confusion of the studio; the
boisterous comradeship of my co