romance. But she has
owned to me that the words written on a scrap of paper by Paragot and
posted from London were tragically true:

"My dear. It is only the shadows of our past selves that love. You and I
are strangers to each other. To continue this sweet pretence of love is
a mockery of the Holiest. God bless you. Gaston."

"If you love a Dream Woman," said Paragot, "let her stay the divine
Woman of the Dream. To awaken and clasp flesh and blood, no matter how
delicately tender, and find that love has sped at the dawn is a misery
too deep for tears."

And Paragot, lying unshaven, unwashed, in grimy shirt and trousers,
smoked silently and stared into a future in which the dear sweet Dream
Woman with "the little feet so adored" would never, never again have a
place.

"If I had a coat to my back," said he, after nearly half an hour's
silence, "I verily believe I would go to the Pont Neuf and talk to Henri
Quatre."

* * * * *

_Le Fou Rire_ had given me a commission for a front page in colours; and
I was deep in the disreputable task on the following evening when
Paragot appeared in my attic. He wore a jacket, his bag having arrived
from Melford.

"My soul hungers," said he, "for the Cafe Delphine, and my throat
thirsts for sociable alcohol. If you can cease the prostitution of your
art to a salacious public for an hour or two, I shall be very glad of
your company."

"I think it's rather good," said I complacently, regarding the drawing
with head bent sideways. "It's an old theme, but it's up to date. At
Janot's they would say it was palpitating with modernity."

"That's what makes it vile," said Paragot.

We were thrown into immediate argument. One of the flying art notions of
the hour was to revive the old subjects which contained the eternal
essentials of life and present them in "palpitatingly modern" form. I
eloquently developed my thesis. We were sick to death, for instance, of
the quasi-scriptural Prodigal Son, sitting half-naked in a desert beside
a swine trough. Was it not more "palpitating" to set the prodigal in
modern Paris?

"Your moderns can't palpitate with dignity, my son," replied Paragot.
"Take Susannah and the Elders. Classically treated the subject might yet
produce one of the greatest pictures of all time. Translate it into the
grocer's wife and the two churchwardens and you cannot escape from
bestial vulgarity."

Conscious of the wide horizon of extrem