der Saint Anthony?" repeated Lady Derl. "H--m--m! Perhaps you are
right. But Blanche, Berthe, and Vi will hold it against me."

When Lewis was alone with his father, he asked: "Does Lady Derl belong
to the Old Guard?"

"You wouldn't think it, but she does," said Leighton,--"inside."

CHAPTER XIX

"My boy," said Leighton to Lewis two days later, as they were threading
a narrow street in the shadow of Montmartre, "you will meet in a few
moments Le Brux, the only living sculptor. You will call him _Maitre_
from the start. If he cuffs you or swears at you, call him _Mon Matre_.
That's all the French you will need for some months."

Leighton dodged by a sleepy concierge with a grunted greeting and
climbed a broad stone stairway, then a narrower flight. He knocked on a
door and opened it. They passed into an enormous room, cluttered, if
such space could be said to be cluttered, with casts, molding-boards,
clay, dry and wet, a throne, a couch, a workman's bench, and some
dilapidated chairs. A man in a smock stood in the midst of the litter.

When Lewis's eye fell upon him as he turned toward them, the room
suddenly became dwarfed. The man was a giant. A tremendous head, crowned
with a mass of grayish hair, surmounted a monster body. The voice, when
it came, did justice to such a frame. "My old one, my friend, Letonne!
Thou art well come. Thou art the saving grace to an idle hour."

Once more Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite
unintelligible. But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his
brain of action. They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after
another. Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust
that could not hide their wondrous contour. Others hung upon the wall.
Some were fragments. A monster group, half finished, held the center of
the floor. A ladder was beside it.

Leighton got up and strolled around. "What's new?" he asked. His eyes
fell on the cast of an arm, a fragment. The arm was outstretched. It was
the arm of a woman. So lightly had it been molded that it seemed to
float. It seemed pillowed on invisible clouds.

"_Matre"_, said Leighton, "I want that. How much?"

Le Brux moved over beside the cast. As he approached it, Lewis stared at
his bulk, at his hairy chest, showing at the open neck of his smock, at
his great, nervous hands, and wondered if this could be the creator of
so soft a dream in clay.

"Bah! That?" said Le Brux. "I