Her cousin again bade her be silent. She stamped her foot passionately.
"But I will speak! Why should you take her part?"
With an expression which Bella felt to be grave, Fairfax repeated—
"You must not speak her name, as your father told you. It's a mighty hard thing for one woman to judge another, little cousin. Wait until you are a woman yourself."
Fairfax understood. He thought how the way had opened to his weak, sentimental aunt; he fancied that he saw again the doe at the gate of the imposing park of the unreal forest; the gate had swung open, and, her eyes as mild as ever, the doe had entered the mystic world. To him this image of his aunt was perfect. Oh! mysterious, dreadful, wonderful heart of woman!
Bella stood by his side, looking up at him. "Cousin Antony," she breathed, "why do you take her part?"
"I want her daughter to take it, Bella, or say nothing."
Her dark eyes were on him intently, curiously. His throat was bare, his blond hair cut close around his neck; the marks of his recent grief and struggle had thinned and saddened his face. He had altered very much in five years.
"I remember," Bella said sharply, "you used to seem fond of her;" and added, "I loved my father best."
Fairfax made no reply, and Bella walked slowly across the studio, and started to sit down under the green lamp.
"No," cried Fairfax, "not there, Bella!"
Her hand on the back of the chair, the young girl paused in surprise.
"Why, why not, Cousin Antony?"
Why not, indeed! He had not prevented Rainsford from sitting there.
"Is the chair weak in its legs?" she laughed. "I'm light—I'll risk it," and, half defiantly, she seated herself by the table, leaning both elbows on it. She looked back at him. "Now, make a little drawing of me as you used to do. I'll show it to the girls in school to prove what a genius we have in the family; and I must go back, too, or I'll have more bad marks than ever."
Fairfax did not obey her. Instead, he looked at her as though he saw through her to eternity.
Bella sprang up impulsively, and came toward him. "Cousin Antony," she murmured, "I'm perfectly dreadful. I'm selfish and inconsiderate. It's only because I'm a little wild. I don't mean it. You've told me nothing." She lifted his cravat from the chair. "You wear a black cravat and your clothes are black. Is it for Aunt Arabella still?"
Fairfax seemed to himself to look down on her from a height. Her brilliance, her sparkle and youth were far away. His heart ached within him.
"One goes mighty far in five years, Bella.... One loses many things."
"I know—Gardiner and your mother. But who else?"
He saw her face sadden; the young girl extended her hand to him, her eyes darkened.
"Who else?" she breathed.
Fairfax put out his arms toward her, but did not enfold her. He let his hands rest on her shoulders and murmured, "Bella, little Bella," and choked the other words back.
"No," she said, "I'm not little Bella any more. Please answer me, Cousin Antony."
He could not have told her for his life. He could tell her nothing; her charm, her lifted face, beautiful, ardent,were the most real, the most vital things the world had ever held for him. The fascination found him under his new grief. He exclaimed, turning brusquely toward his covered scaffolding—
"Don't you want to see my work, Bella? I've been at it nearly a year."
He rapidly drew the curtain and exposed his bas-relief.
There was in the distance a vague indication of distant sky-line—a far horizon—upon which, into which, a door opened, held ajar by a woman's arm and hand. The woman's figure, draped in the clinging garment of the grave, was passing through, but in going her face was turned, uplifted, to look back at a man without, who, apparently unconscious of her, gazed upon life and the world. That was all—the two figures and the feeling of the vast illimitable far-away.
It seemed to Fairfax as he unveiled his work that he looked upon it himself for the first time; it seemed to him finished, moreover, complete. He knew that he could do nothing more with it. He heard Bella ask, "Who is it, Cousin Antony? It is perfectly beautiful!" her old enthusiasm soft and warm in her voice.
At her repeated question, "Who is it?" he replied, "A dream woman." And his cousin said, "You have lovely dreams, but it is too sad."
He told her for what it was destined, and she listened, musing, and when she turned her face to him again there were tears in her eyes. She pointed to the panel.
"There should be a child there," she said, with trembling lips. "They go in too, Cousin Antony."
"Yes," he responded, "they go in too."
He crossed the floor with her toward the door, neither of them speaking. She drew on her gloves, but at the door he said—
"Stop a moment. I'm going a little way with you."
"No, Cousin Antony, you can't. Myra Scutfield, my best friend, is waiting for me with her brother. I'm supposed to be visiting her for Sunday. You mustn't come."
Her hand was on the door latch. He gently took her hand and pushed it aside. He did not wish her to openthat door or to go through it alone. As they stood there silent, she lifted her face and said—
"I'm going away for the Easter holidays. Kiss me good-bye."
And he stooped and kissed her—kissed Bella, the little cousin, the honey child—no, kissed Bella, the woman, on her lips.
From the window he watched her fly up the street like a scarlet bird, and realized what a child she was still, and, whereas he had felt a hundred that day at church, he now felt as old as the ancient Egyptians, as the Sphinx, a Sage in suffering and knowledge of life, beside his cousin. He called her little, but she was tall and slender, standing as high as his shoulder.
He turned heavily about to his room which the night now filled. The street lamps were lit, and their frail glimmer flickered in, like the fingers of a ghost. His money was nearly gone. There was the expense of casting his work in plaster, the packing and shipping of the bas-relief. He lit his lamp, and, as he adjusted the green shade, under which Molly had used to sit and sew, he saw on the table the roll of bills which Rainsford had offered to him that morning. He picked up the money with a smile.
"Poor old Rainsford, dear old chap. He was determined, wasn't he?"
Fairfax wrapped up the heavy roll of money, marked it with Rainsford's name, and stood musing on his friend's failing health, his passion for Molly, and the fruitless, vanishing story that ended, as all seemed to end for him, in death. Suddenly, over his intense feelings, came the need of nourishment, and he wanted to escape from the room where he had been caged all day.
At the Delavan, George Washington welcomed him with delight.
"Yo' dun forgit yo' ol' friends, Massa' Kunnell Fairfax, sah. Yo doan favour dis ol' nigger any moh."
Fairfax told him that he was an expensive luxury, and enjoyed his quiet meal and his cigar, took a walk in adifferent direction from Canal Street, and at ten o'clock returned to find a boy waiting at the door with a note, whistling and staring up and down the street, waiting for the gentleman to whom he was to deliver his note in person.
Fairfax went in with his letter, knowing before he opened it that Rainsford had something grave to tell him. He sat down in Molly's chair, around which the Presence had gathered and brooded until the young man's soul had seemed engulfed in the shadow of Death.
"My dear Tony,
"When you read this letter, it will be of no use to come to me. Don't come. I said my final word to you to-day when I went to make my will and testament. You will discover on your table all my fortune. It counts up to a thousand dollars. I have a feeling that it may help you to success. You know what a failure I have been. I should have been one right along. Now that I have found out that a mortal disease is upon me, my last spurt of courage is gone. When I stood before your work to-day, Tony, it was a benediction to me. Although I had fully decided togo out, I should have gone hopelessly; now there is something grand to me in the retreat. The uplift and the solemnity of the far horizon charm me, and though I open the door for myself and have no right to any claim for mercy, nevertheless I think that I shall find it there, and I am going through the open door. God bless you, Fairfax. Don't let the incidents of your life in Albany cloud what I believe will be a great career."Thomas Rainsford."
"When you read this letter, it will be of no use to come to me. Don't come. I said my final word to you to-day when I went to make my will and testament. You will discover on your table all my fortune. It counts up to a thousand dollars. I have a feeling that it may help you to success. You know what a failure I have been. I should have been one right along. Now that I have found out that a mortal disease is upon me, my last spurt of courage is gone. When I stood before your work to-day, Tony, it was a benediction to me. Although I had fully decided togo out, I should have gone hopelessly; now there is something grand to me in the retreat. The uplift and the solemnity of the far horizon charm me, and though I open the door for myself and have no right to any claim for mercy, nevertheless I think that I shall find it there, and I am going through the open door. God bless you, Fairfax. Don't let the incidents of your life in Albany cloud what I believe will be a great career.
"Thomas Rainsford."
He was too young to be engulfed by death.
But he did not think or understand then that the great events which had racked his nerves in suffering were only incidents. Nor did he know that neither his soul nor his heart had suffered all they were capable of enduring. In spite of his deep heart-ache and his feelings that quivered with the memories of his wife, he was above all an artist, a creator. Hope sprang from this last grave. Desire in Fairfax had never been fully born; how then could it be fully satisfied or grow old and cold before it had lived!
Tony Fairfax was the sole mourner that followed Rainsford's coffin to the Potter's Field. They would not bury him in consecrated ground. Canon Prynne had been surprised by a visit at eight o'clock in the morning.
Fairfax was received by the Bishop in his bedroom, where the Bishop was shaving. Fairfax, as he talked, caught sight of his own face in the glass, deathly white, his burning eyes as blue as the heavens to which he was sure Rainsford had gone.
"My friend," the ecclesiastic said, "my friend, I have nothing to do with laws, thank God. I am glad that no responsibility has been given me but to do my work. But let me say, to comfort you, is not every whit of the earth that God made holy? What could make it more sacred than the fact that He created it?"
Fairfax thought of these words as he saw the dust scatter and heard the rattle of the stones on the lid of Rainsford's coffin, and in a clear and assured voice of one who knows in whom he has believed, he read from Bella's Prayer-book (he had never given it back to her), "I amthe Resurrection and the Life." He could find no parson to go with him.
On the way back to Albany he met the spring everywhere; it was just before the Easter holidays. Overhead the clouds rolled across a stainless sky, and they took ship-like forms to him and he felt a strong wish to escape—to depart. Rainsford had set him free. It would be months before he could hear from his competition. There was nothing in this continent to keep him. He had come North full of living hope and vital purpose, and meekly, solemnly, his graves had laid themselves out around him, and he alone stood living.
Was there nothing to keep him?
Bella Carew.
He had, of all people in the world, possibly the least right to her. She was his first cousin, nothing but a child; worth, the papers had said, a million in her own right. The heiress of a man who despised him.
But her name was music still; music as yet too delicate, sweet as it was, not to be drowned by the deeper, graver notes that were sounding through Fairfax. There was a call to labour, there was the imperious demand of his art. In him, something sang Glory, and if the other tones meant struggle and battle, nevertheless his desire was all toward them.
The sea which he had just crossed lay gleaming behind him, every lovely ripple washing the shores of a new continent.
The cliffs which he saw rising white in the sunlight were the Norman cliffs. Beyond them the fields waved in the summer air and the June sky spread blue over France.
As he stepped down from the gang-plank and touched French soil, he gazed about him in delight.
The air was salt and indescribably sweet. The breeze came to him over the ripening fields and mingled with the breath of the sea.
They passed his luggage through the Customs quickly, and Antony was free to wonder and to explore. Not since he had left the oleanders and jasmines of New Orleans had he smelled such delicious odours as those of sea-girdled Havre. A few soldiers in red uniforms tramped down the streets singing the Marseillaise. A group of fish-wives offered him mussels and crabs.
In his grey travelling clothes, his soft grey hat, his bag in his hand, he went away from the port toward the wide avenue.
The bright colour of a red awning of a café caught his eye; he decided to breakfast before going on to Paris.
Paris! The word thrilled him through and through.
At a small table out of doors he ordered "boeuf à lamode" and "pommes de terre." It seemed agreeable to speak French again and his soft Creole accent charmed the ear of the waiter who bent smiling to take his order.
Antony watched with interest the scene around him; those about him seemed to be good-humoured, contented travellers on the road of life. There was a neat alacrity about the waiters in their white aprons.
A girl with a bouquet of roses came up to him. Antony gave her a sou and in exchange she gave him a white rose.
"Thank you, Monsieur the Englishman."
He had never tasted steak and potatoes like these. He had never tasted red wine like this. And it cost only a franc! He ordered his coffee and smoked and mused in the bland June light.
He was happier than he had been for many a long day.
Eventful, tremulous, terrible and expressive, his past lay behind him on another shore. He felt as though he were about to seek his fortune for the first time.
As soon as Rainsford's generous gift became his own, the possession of his little fortune, even at such a tragic price, made a new man of Fairfax. He magnified its power, but it proved sufficient to buy him a gentlemanly outfit, the ticket to France, and leave him a little capital.
His plans unfolded themselves to him now, as he sat musing before the restaurant. He would study in the schools with Cormon or Julian. He had brought with him his studies of Molly—he would have them criticized by the great masters. All Paris was before him. The wonders of the galleries, whose masterpieces were familiar to him in casts and photographs, would disclose themselves to him now. He would see the Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris....
His spirits rose as he touched the soil of France. Now Paris should be his mistress, and art should be his passion!
His ticket took him second-class on a slow train and he found a seat amongst the humble travelling world; between a priest and a soldier, he smoked his cigarettes and offered them to his companions, and watched the river flowing between the poplars, the fields red withpoppies, yellow with wheat. The summer light shining on all shone on him through the small window of the carriage, and though it was sunset it seemed to Fairfax sunrise. The hour grew late. The darkness fell and the motion of the cars made him drowsy, and he fell asleep.
He was awakened by the stirring of his fellow-passengers, by the rich Norman voices, by the jostling and moving among the occupants of the carriage, and he gathered his thoughts together, took his valise in his hand and climbed down from the car.
He passed out with the crowd through the St. Lazare station. He had in Havre observed with interest the novel constructions of the engines and the rolling stock. The crowd of market-women, peasants, curés, was anonymous to him, but as he passed the engine which had brought him from Havre, he glanced up at the mechanician, a big, blond-moustached fellow in a blue blouse. The engineer's face streamed with perspiration and he was smoking a cigarette.
He had shunned engines and yards, and everything that had to do with his old existence, for months; now he nodded with a friendly sympathetic smile to the engine-driver.
"Bien le bonjour," he said cheerfully, as he had heard the people in the train say it, "Bien le bonjour."
The Frenchman nodded and grinned and watched him limp down and out with the others to the waiting-room called, picturesquely, the Hall of the Lost Footsteps—"La Salle des Pas Perdus."
And Antony's light step and his heavy step fell among the countless millions that come and go, go and come, unmarked, forgotten—to walk with the Paris multitudes into paths of obscurity or fame—"les pas perdus."
It was the first beginning of summer dawn when he turned breathlessly into the Rue de Rome and stood at length in Paris. He shouldered his big bag and took his bearings. At that early hour there were few people abroad—here and there a small open carriage, drawn by a limp, melancholy horse and dominated by what he thought a picturesque cabby, passed him invitingly. A drive in a cab in America is not for a man of uncertain means, and the folly of taking a vehicle did not occur to him. Along the broad avenue at the street's foot, lights were still lit in the massive lamps, shops and houses were closed, and by a blue sign on the wall he read that he was crossing a great avenue. The Boulevard Haussmann was as tranquil as a village street. A couple of good-looking men, whom he thought were soldiers, caught his eye in their uniforms of white trousers and blue coats. He asked them, touching his hat, the first thing that came to his mind: "La Rue Mazarine, Messieurs—would they direct him?"
When he came out on the Place de la Concorde at four o'clock he was actually the only speck visible in the great circle. He stopped, enchanted, to look about him. The imaginative and inadequate picture of the Place de la Concorde his idea had drawn, faded. The light mists of the morning swept up the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and there stood out before his eyes the lines of the Triumphal Arch, which to Antony said: Napoleon!
On the left stretched gardens toward a great palace, all that has been left to France and the glory which was her doom.
From the spectral line of the Louvre, his eyes came back to the melancholy statues that rose near him—Strassburg, Luxemburg, Alsace and Lorraine. Huge iron wreaths hung about their bases, wreaths that blossomed as he looked, like flowers of blood and lilies of death.
Then in front of him the calm, rose-hued obelisk lifted its finger, and once again the shadow of Egypt fell across the heart of a modern city. To Antony, the obelisk had an affinity with the Abydos Sphinx, but this obelisk did not rest on the backs of four bronze creatures!
The small cabs continued to tinkle slowly across the Place; a group of young fellows passed by, singing on their way to the Latin Quarter, from some fête in Montmartre—they were students going home before morning. In the distance, here and there, were a few foot passengers like himself, but to Antony it seemed that he was alone in Paris. And in the fresh beginning of a day untried and momentous, the city was like a personality. In the summer softness, in the tender, agreeable light, the welcome to him was caressing and as lovely as New York had been brutal.
Antony resumed his way to the river, followed the quays where at his side the Seine ran along, reddening in the summer's sunrise. Along the river, when he crossed the Pont des Arts, he saw the stirring of Parisian life. He went on down the quays, past quaint old houses whose traditions and history he wanted to know, turned off into a dark street—la Rue Mazarine. He smiled as he read the sign. What had this narrow Parisian alley to do with him? He had adopted it out of caprice, distinguished it from all Paris.
He scanned the shops and houses; many were still closed, neither milk-shops nor antiquity dealers suggested shelter. A modest sign over a dingy-looking building caught his eye. In the courtyard, in green wooden tubs, flourished two bay-trees.
"Hotel of the Universe"—Hotel de l'Univers.
That was hospitable enough, wide enough to take Antony Fairfax in. Behind the bay-trees a dirty, discouraged looking waiter, to whom the universe had apparently not been generous, welcomed, or at least glanced, at Fairfax. The fellow wore a frayed, colourlessdress-suit; his linen was suspicious, but his head at this early hour was sleekly brushed and oiled.
"No, the hotel is not yet full," he told the stranger, as though he said, "The entire universe, thank God, has not yet descended upon us."
For one franc fifty a room could be had on the sixth floor. Antony yielded up his bag and bade the man show the way.
He could hardly wait to make his hasty toilet and set forth into the city. He saw something of it from the eave-window in his microscopic room. Chimney-pots, stained, mossy roofs, the flash of old spires, the round of a dome, the river, the bridges, all under the supernal blue of, to him, a friendly sky—he felt that he must quaff it all at a draught. But the fatigue of his lame limb began to oppress him. There was the weight of sleep on his eyelids, and he turned gratefully to the small bed under the red rep curtains. It was ridiculously small for his six feet of body, but he threw himself down thankfully and slept.
Dreams chased each other through his brain and he stretched out his hands toward elusive forms in his sleep. He seized upon one, thinking it was Bella, and when he pressed his cheek to hers, the cheek was cold and the form was cold. He slept till afternoon and rose still with the daze upon him of his arrival and his dreams, and the first excitement somewhat calmed. He had enough change for his lodging and dinner, but nothing more.
He walked across the bridge and the light and brilliance of the city dazzled him. He went into the Louvre, and the coolness and breadth of the place fell on him like a spell. He wondered if any in that vast place was as athirst as he was and as mad for beauty. He wandered through the rooms enthralled, and made libations to the relics of old Egypt; he sent up hymns to the remains of ancient Greece, and before the Venus of Milo gave up his heart, standing long absorbed before the statue, swearing to slave for the production of beauty. He found himself stirred to his most passionate depths, musing on form and artistic creation, and when the pulse in his heart becametoo strong and the Venus oppressed his sense, he wandered out, limped up the staircase and delivered up his soul at the foot of the pedestal of the Winged Victory. He did not go to the paintings; the feast had been tremendous—he could bear no more.
On his way out of the Louvre he passed through the Egyptian room. Ever since the Abydos Sphinx had been brought to America, from the Nile, Egypt had charmed him. He had read of Egypt, its treasures, in the Albany library now and then on Sunday afternoons. It had a tremendous attraction for him, and he entered the room where its relics were with worship of the antique in his soul.
He turned to go, when his foot touched something on the floor and he stooped to pick it up—a fine chain purse heavy with pieces of gold. He balanced it in his hand and looked around for the possible owner, but he was the only sightseer. He went, however, quickly from the museum, not knowing in just what manner to restore this property, and in front of him, passing out on to the gallery above the grand staircase, he saw a lady leisurely making her exit. She was beautifully dressed and had such an air of riches about her that he thought to himself, with every reason, why should she not be the possessor of a gold purse? He went up to her.
"I beg pardon," he began, and as she turned he recognized her in a moment as the woman by whose carriage he had stood in the crowd on the day of the unveiling of his statue—he recognized her as the woman who had drawn the veil of the Sphinx. She was Cedersholm's fiancée. "Have you lost anything, Madame?"
She exclaimed: "My purse! Oh, thank you very much." Then looked at him, smiling, and said, "But I think I have seen you before. Whom must I thank?"
He had his hat in his hand. His fine, clear brow over which the hair grew heavily, his beautiful face, his strength and figure, once seen and remembered as she had remembered them in that brief instant in New York, were not to be forgotten. Still the resemblance puzzled her.
"My name is Rainsford," he said quietly, "Thomas Rainsford. I am one of Mr Cedersholm's pupils."
"If that is so," she said, "you are welcome at my house at any time. I am home Sundays. Won't you give me the pleasure of calling, Mr. Rainsford?"
He bowed, thanked her, and they walked down the stairs together, and she was unable to recall where she had seen this handsome young man.
In his little hotel that night he lighted a candle in a tall nickel candlestick, and, when he was ready for bed, he peered into his mirror at his own face, which he took pains to consider thoughtfully. Like a friend's it looked back at him, the marks of Life deep upon it.
At two o'clock he was in a heavy sleep when he was roused by the turning of the handle of his door. Some one had come into the room and Antony, bolt upright, heard the door drawn and the key turned. Then something slipped and fell with a thud. He lit his candle, shielded it, and to his amazement saw sitting on the floor, his big form taking up half the little room, a young fellow in full evening dress, an opera hat on the back of his head.
"Don't squeal," said the visitor gently with a hiccough; "I see I'm too late or too early, or shomething or other."
He was evidently a gentleman out of his room and evidently drunk. Antony laughed and got half-way out of bed.
"You're in the wrong room, that's clear, and how are you going to get out of it? Can you get up with a lift?"
"Look here"—the young man who was an American and who would have been agreeable-looking if he had not been drunk and hebetated, sat back and leaned comfortably against the door—"roomsh all right, good roomsh, just like mine; don't mind me, old man, go back to bed."
Antony came over and tried to pull him up, but the stranger was immense, as big as himself, and determined and happy. He had made up his mind to pass his night on the floor.
Antony rang his bell in vain, then sighed, himself overcome with sleep. To the young man who barricadedthe door, and who was already beginning to drowse, he said pleasantly—
"Give us your hat, anyway, and take off your coat."
"Now you go back to bed, sir," ordered the other with solemn dignity, "go back to bed, don't mind me. I'm nothing but a little mountain flower," he quoted pathetically. His head fell over, his big body followed it.
Antony took one of his pillows, put it under the fellow's head, and turned in himself, amused by his singularly companioned night.
"What the deuce!" he heard the next morning from a voice not unpleasant, although markedly Western. And he opened his eyes to see bending over him a ruffled, untidy, pasty-looking individual whom he remembered to have last seen sprawling on the floor.
"Say, are you in my bed or am I only out of my own?" asked the young man.
Antony told him.
"George!" exclaimed the other, sitting down on the bed and taking his head in his hands, "I was screwed all right, and I fell like a barrel in the Falls of Niagara. I'm ever so much obliged to you for not kicking up a row here. My room is next or opposite or somewhere, I guess—that is, if I'm in the Universe."
Antony said that he was.
"I feel," said the young man, "as though its revolutions had accelerated."
"There's water over there," said Antony; "you're welcome to have it."
"See here," said the total stranger, "if you're half the brick you seem—and you are or you wouldn't have let me snore all night on the carpet—ring for Alphonse and send him out to get some bromo seltzer. There's a chemist's bang up against the hotel, and he's got that line of drugs."
Fairfax put out his arm and rang from the bed. The young man waited dejectedly; having taken off his coat and collar, he looked somewhat mournfully at his silk hat which, the worse for his usage of it, had rolled in a corner of Fairfax's room.
Alphonse, who for a wonder was within a few stepsof the room, answered the bell, his advent announced by the shuffling of his old slippers; but before he had knocked the young man slid across the room and stood flat behind the door so that, when it opened, his presence would not be observed by the valet.
The man, for whom Fairfax had not yet had occasion to ring, opened the door and stood waiting for the order. He was a small, round-faced fellow in a green barege apron, that came up and down and all over him. In his hand he carried a melancholy feather duster.
"Le déjeuner, Monsieur?" smiled Alphonse cordially, "un café complet?"
"Yes," acquiesced Antony eagerly, "and as well, would you go to the pharmacy and get me a bottle of bromo seltzer?"
"Bien, Monsieur." The valet looked much surprised and considered Fairfax's handsome, healthy face. "Bien, Monsieur," and he waited.
Fairfax was about to say: "Give me my waistcoat," but remembering his secluded friend, sprang out of bed and gave to Alphonse a five-franc piece.
"You're a brick," said the young man, coming out from behind the door. "I'm awfully obliged. Now let me get my head in a basin of water and I'll be back with you in a jiffy." And he darted out evidently into the next room, for Fairfax heard the door bang and lock.
Fairfax threw back his head and laughed. He was not utterly alone in France, he had a drunken neighbour, a fellow companion on the sixth floor of the Universe, which, after all, divides itself more or less into stories in more ways than one. He opened his window and let in the June morning, serene and lovely. It shone on him over chimney-pots and many roofs and slender towers in the far distance. He heard the dim noise of the streets. He had gone as far in his toilet as mixing the shaving water, when the valet returned with a tray and presented Fairfax with his first "petit déjeuner" in France. The young man thought it tempting—butter in a golden pat, with a flower stamped on it. The little rolls and something about the appearance of the little meal suggested his New Orleans home—he half looked to see a dusky face beam on him—"Massa Tony, chile"—and the vines at the window.
"Voici, Monsieur." Alphonse indicated the bromide. "I think everything is here." The intelligent servant had perceived the crushed silk hat in the corner and gave a little cough behind his hand.
Fairfax, six feet and more in his stockings, blond and good to look at, his bright humour, his charm, his soft Creole accent, pleased Alphonse.
"I see Monsieur has not unpacked his things. If I can serve Monsieur he has only to ask me." Alphonse picked up the opera hat, straightened it out and looked at it. "Shall I hang this up, Monsieur?"
"Do, behind the door, Alphonse."
The man did so and withdrew, and no sooner his rapid, light footsteps patted down the hall-way than Fairfax eagerly seated himself before his breakfast and poured out his excellent café au lait. The door was softly pushed in again, shut to and locked—the dissipated young gentleman seemed extremely partial to locked doors—and Fairfax's companion of the night before said in an undertone—
"Go slow, nobody in the hotel knows I'm in it."
Fairfax, who was not going slow over his breakfast, indicated the opera hat behind the door and the bromide.
"Hurrah for you and Alphonse," exclaimed the young fellow, who prepared himself a pick-me-up eagerly, and without invitation seated himself at Fairfax's table.
A good-looking young man of twenty-five, not more, with a cheerful, intelligent face in sober moments, now pale, with parched lips and eyes not clear yet. He had washed and his hair was smoothly brushed. He had no regularity of features such as Fairfax, being a well-set-up, ordinary young fellow, such as one might see in any American college or university. But there was a fineness in the lines of his mouth, a drollery and wit in his eyes, and he was thoroughly agreeable.
"I'm from the West," he said, putting his glass down empty. "Robert Dearborn, from Cincinnati—and I'm no end obliged to you, old chap, whoever you are. You've got a good breakfast there, haven't you?"
"Have some," Antony offered with real generosity, for he was famished.
"Well," returned Dearborn, "to tell you the truth,I feel as if I were robbing a sleeping man to take it, for I know how fiendishly hungry you must be. But, by Jove, I haven't had a thing to eat since"—and he laughed—"since I was a child."
He rinsed the glass that had held the bromide, poured out some black coffee for himself and took half of Fairfax's bread and half of his flower-stamped butter, and devoured it eagerly. When he had finished he wiped his mouth and genially held out his hand.
"Ever been hungry?"
Antony did not tell him how lately.
"Good," nodded Dearborn, "I understand. Passing through Paris?"
"Just arrived."
"Well, I've been here for two whole years. By the way," he questioned Antony, "you haven't told me your name."
Fairfax hesitated because of a fancy that had come into his mind when he had discovered the loss of his fortune.
"Thomas Rainsford," he said; then, for he could not deny his home, "from New Orleans."
"Ah!" exclaimed his companion, "that's why you speak such ripping French. Now, do you know, to hear me you wouldn't think I'd seen a gendarme or a Parisian pavement. My Western accent, you must have remarked it, refuses to mix with a foreign language. I can speak French," he said calmly, "but they can't understand me yet; I have been here two years."
There was a knock at the door. Dearborn started and held up his hand.
"If Monsieur will give me his boots," suggested the mellow voice of Alphonse, "I will clean them."
Fairfax picked up his boots, the big shoe and the smaller one, and handed out the pair through a crack in the door.
When once again the rabbit steps had pattered away—"Go on dressing," Dearborn said, "don't let me stop you. You don't mind my sitting here a minute until Alphonse does with his boot-cleaning operations. He's a magician at that. They keep their boots clean, here, if they don't wash."
Dearborn made himself comfortable, accepted a cigarette from the packet the landlady had given Fairfax, and put his feet on the chair that Fairfax had vacated.
"I went out last night to a little supper with some friends of mine. The banquet rather used me up."
He smiled, and Fairfax saw how he looked when he was more himself. His hair, as the water dried on it, was reddish, he was clean-shaven, his teeth were white and sound, his smile agreeable.
"Now, if I hadn't been drunk, I shouldn't have come back to the Universe. I was due a quarter of a mile away from here. They'll keep me when they find me. I haven't paid my bill here to Madame Poulet for six weeks. But they are decent, trustful sort of people and can't believe a chap won't ever pay. But I was fool enough to leave my father's cable in my room and Madame Poulet had it translated. I grant you it wasn't encouraging for a creditor, Rainsford."
Antony heard his name used for the first time, the R's rolled and made the most of. It seemed to bring back the dead.
"Listen to the cable," said the communicative young man: "'You can go to the devil. Not a cent more from me or your mother.'"
Fairfax, who was tying his cravat, turned around and smiled, and he limped over to his visitor.
"It's not the most friendly telegram I ever heard," he said.
"Step-father," returned the other briefly. "She knows nothing about it—my mother, I mean. I've been living on her money here for two years and over and it's gone; but before I take a penny from him ..."
"I understand," said Fairfax, going back to the mirror and beginning to brush his hair.
"Did you ever have a mother?" asked the red-haired young man with a queer look on his face, and added, "I see you have. Well, let's drop the subject, then, but you may discuss step-fathers all you choose."
Fairfax, for he was not Rainsford, yet, took a fancy to his visitor, a fancy to his rough, deep voice; he liked the eyes that were clearing fast, liked the kindly spirited face and the ready, boy-like confidence.
"What are you up to in Paris?" he asked Dearborn, regarding him with interest.
"I'm a playwright," said the other simply.
"A playwright," Fairfax repeated softly. If Dearborn had said "Ali Baba," Fairfax would scarcely have been more surprised.
"You must know the Bohemian life here?" he asked, "even possibly know some artists?"
"Well, rather," drawled his companion; "I live among them. I don't know a single chap who isn't doing something, burning the midnight oil or using the daylight in a studio."
As Dearborn spoke, Fairfax, looking at him more observantly, saw something in his countenance that responded to his own feelings.
"What are you over here for, Rainsford?" asked the Westerner.
"I am a sculptor."
"Delightful!" exclaimed his companion. "Where are you going to work? With Carrier-Belleuse or Rude?"
"Ah, I don't know—I don't know where I can go or what I can do."
His companion, with an understanding nod, said, "Didn't bring over a gold-mine with you, perhaps?"
As he said this he laughed, extended both his hands and jumped up from his seat.
"I like you exceedingly," he exclaimed heartily. "The governor had telegraphed me to go to the devil and I thought I'd take his advice. The little supper I was giving last night was to say good-bye to a hundred-franc note, some money that I won at poker. I might have paid some of this hotel bill, but I didn't. I wish you had been there, Rainsford! But, never mind, youhad the afterglow anyway! No," he laughed, "let us surprise them at home. I don't quite know how, but let's surprise them."
Fairfax shook his head as though he didn't quite understand.
"Is there no one who thinks you an insane fool for going in for art? Nobody that your success will be gall to?"
"No, I'm all alone."
"Come," urged the other, too excited to see the sadness on his companion's face. "Come, isn't there some one who will cringe when your statues are unveiled?"
"Stop!" cried Fairfax eagerly.
"Come on then," cried the boy; "whoever it may be, your enemy or my stepfather—we will surprise them yet!"
In January of the following year he leaned out of the window and smelled Paris, drank it in, penetrated by its fragrance and perfume. He saw the river milkily flowing between the shores, the stones of the quay parapet, the arches of the bridges, the wide domain of roofs and towers.
The Sacré-Coeur on Montmartre had not yet begun to rise, though they were laying its foundation stones, and his eyes travelled, as they always did, through the fog to the towers of Notre-Dame with its black, mellow front and its melancholy beauty. The bourdon of the bells smote sympathetically through him. No matter what his state of mind might be, Paris took him out of himself, and he adored it.
He was looking upon the first of the winter mists. The first grey mystery had obscured the form of the city. Paris had a new seduction. He could not believe now that he had not been born in France and been always part of the country he had adopted by temperament and spirit. Like all artists, his country was where he worked the best. For him now, unless the place were a workshop, it could never be a hearthstone, and he took satisfaction in recalling his ancestry on his mother's side—Debaillet, or, as they called it in New Orleans, Ballet. As Arabella Ballet his mother had been beautiful; as Mrs. Fairfax she had given him Irish and French blood.
"Atavism," he said to Dearborn, "you cannot love this place as I do, Bob. My grandfather escaped in the disguise of a French cook to save his head in 1793. I seem to see his figure walking before me when I cross the Place de la Concorde, and the shadow of the guillotine falls across his path."
From his corner of the room Dearborn drawled, "If the substance of the guillotine had fallen across his neck, Tony, where would you be in our mutual history?"
Antony had asked his companion to call him Tony. He had not been able to disassociate himself with everything that recalled the past.
Fairfax's figure as he turned was dark against the light of the window and the room was full of the shadows of the early January twilight. He wore a pair of velveteen breeches whose original colour might have been a dark, rich blue. His flannel shirt (no longer red) was fastened loosely at the neck by a soft black cravat under a rolling collar. It was Sunday and he was working, the clay white upon his fingers and nails. He wore an old pair of slippers, and Dearborn on a couch in a corner watched him, a Turkish drapery wound around his shoulders, for the big room was chilly and it smelled of clay and tobacco smoke. The studio was an enormous attic, running the length of an hotel once of some magnificence, now a tumble-down bit of still beautiful architecture. The room was portioned off for the use of two people. Two couches served in the night-time as their beds, there was a small stove guiltless of fire, a few pieces of studio property, a skylight, a desk covered with papers and books and manuscripts, and in the part of the room near the window and under the skylight, Tony Fairfax, now Thomas Rainsford, worked among his casts and drawings, amidst the barrels of clay and plaster. To him, in spite of being almost always hungry, in spite of the discomfort, of the constant presence and companionship of another when he often longed for solitude, in spite of this, his domain was a heaven. He had come into the place in June with Dearborn.
Tony had paid a year's rent in advance. He was working as a common journeyman in the studio of Barye, and early in the morning, late at night, and on Sundays, worked for himself eagerly, hungrily, like the slave of old in Albany, and yet, with what a difference! He had no one but himself to consider, but had the interest of the atelier where he studied, even as he sold his skill that it might be lost in the creations of more advancedartists, and there, during the days of his apprenticeship, his visions came to him, and what conceptions he then had he tried to work out and to mature, when he had the chance, in his own room.
Dearborn, who never left the studio except to eat, smoked and worked and read all day.
The two men were sufficiently of a size to wear each other's clothes. They had thought it out carefully and had preserved from the holocaust, of the different financial crises, one complete out-of-door outfit, from hat to boots—and those boots!
It was "déplorable" the bookseller, whose little shelf of books lay on the stone wall of the quay, said, it was "déplorable" that such a fine pair of men should be lame and in exactly the same fashion. Fairfax could not walk at all in the other man's shoes, so his normal friend made the sacrifice and the proper shoes were pawned, and Robert Dearborn and Tony Fairfax had shared alternately the big boot and the small one, the light and the heavy step. And they were directed by such different individuals, the boots went through Paris in such diverse ways!
"By Jove!" exclaimed Dearborn, examining the boots carefully, "it isn't fair. You're walking these boots of ours to death! Who the deuce will take them out in his bare feet to be repaired?"
They were just as absurdly poor as this. Nobody whose soul is not absorbed in art can ever understand what it is to be so stupidly poor.
Dearborn, when he could be forced out of the house, put on the shoes with reluctance; he was greatly annoyed by the clatter of the big boot. The shoes didn't fit him in the least. He would shuffle into the nearest café, if his credit was good enough to permit it, and there, under the small table on which he wrote page after page over his cigarette and cup of black coffee, he hid the big awkward shoe for as long as he could endure exile from the studio. Then he came home.
Fairfax swung the boot down the stairs, he swung it along the pavements of Paris! What distance he took it! It seemed to have a wing at the heel. It tramped through the quarters of the city from the quays to fineold streets, to forgotten alleys, to the Cité on the Ile, then again by the fresh gay avenues of the Champs Elysées to the Bois, again to the quays, and, when well up the river, he would sometimes board the boat and come back down the Seine, dreaming, musing, creating, and, floating home, would take the big boot upstairs.
"By Jove, Tony!" Dearborn remarked, examining the boots closely, "it's not fair! One of us will have todriveif you don't let up, old man!"
Dearborn, when he did not haunt his café and when inspiration failed, would haunt the Bibliothèque Nationale, and amongst the "Rats de littérature"—savant, actor, poet, amongst the cold and weary who lounge in the chairs of the library to dream, to get warm, and to imagine real firesides with one's own books and one's own walls around them—Dearborn would sit for hours poring over old manuscripts from which he had hoped to extract inspiration, listening, as do his sort, for "the voices."
It was a year of privation, but there were moments spent on the threshold of Paradise.
His materials, barrels of clay and plaster, were costly. Dearborn said that he thanked God he had a "métier" requiring no further expenditure than a pot of ink and a lot of paper.
"The ideas," he told Fairfax, "are expensive, and I think, old man, that I shall have tobuysome. I find that they will not come unless I invite them to dinner!"
Neither of the young men had made a hearty meal for an unconsciously long time. The weather grew colder and they lived as they could on Fairfax's day wage.
At this time, when during the hours of his freedom he was housed with his companion, Fairfax was overwhelmed by the rush of his ideas and his desire to create. He would not let himself long for solitude, for he was devoted to his friend and grateful for his companionship and affection, but a certain piece of work had haunted him since his first Sunday afternoon at the Louvre, and he was eager to finish the statue he had begun and to send it to the Salon.
The Visions no longer eluded him—ever present, sometimes they overpowered him by their obsession. They flattered the young man, seeming to embrace him, called to him, uplifted him until heights levelled before his eyes and became roads upon which he walked lightly, and his pride in his own power grew. Antony forgot to be humble. He was his own master—he had scorned the Academies. For several weeks, when he first came to Paris, he had posed as a model. Sitting there before the students, glowing with shame and pride, his heart was defiant, and not one of the students, who modelled thefine bust and head, imagined how ardent his heart was or what an artist posed for them. Often he longed to seize a tool from inefficient hands and say, "Here, my children, like this, don't you see?"
He learned much from the rare visits of the Master and his cursory, hasty criticism, but he welcomed the impersonal labour in the atelier of Barye, where he was not a student but a worker, mechanical supposedly, yet creative to his fingertips. And as he watched Barye work, admiring him profoundly, eager for the man's praise, crushing down his own individuality, careful to do nothing but the technical, mechanical things he was given to do there—before his hand grew tired, while his brain was fresh, he would plan and dream of what he would do in his own attic, and he went back as a thirsty man to a source.
There came the dead season. Barye shut his atelier and went to Spain. There was nothing to do for Antony Fairfax and he was without any means of making his bread. After a few days of idleness, when his hands and feet were chilblained and he could hardly pass the cafés and restaurants, where the meals were cooking, without a tightening of the chest, he thought to himself, "Now is the time for the competition money to fall among us like a shower of gold"; but he had not heard one word from America or from Falutini, to whom the result was to have been written and who had Fairfax's address.
Dearborn, in a pair of old tennis trousers, a shabby black velvet jacket, sat Turkish fashion on his divan, his writing tablet on his knees. For weeks past he had been writing a five-act play—
"Too hungry, Tony, by Jove, to go on. Every time I start to write, the lines of some old-time menu run across the page—Canards à la presse, Potage à la Reine. Just now it was only pie and yellow cheese, such as we have out in Cincinnati."
Fairfax was breaking a mould. By common consent a fire had been built in the stove. Tony had taken advantage of the warm water to mix his plaster. Dearborn came over from his sofa.
"I wouldn't care to have a barrel of plaster roll onthose chilblains of mine, Tony. It's a toss up with us now, isn't it, which of uscanwear the boots?"
Pinched and haggard, his hands in his pockets, the young fellow watched the sculptor. Fairfax skilfully released his statue from the mould. He had been working on this, with other things, for a month. He unprisoned the little figurine, a little nude dancer, her arms above her head, the face and smile faun-like.
"Pleine de malice," said Dearborn, "extrêmement fine, my dear Tony. As an object of 'luxe' I find it as exquisite as an article of food, if not as satisfying. It's not good enough toeat, Tony, and those are the only standards I judge by now."
Fairfax turned the figure between his fingers lovingly—lily-white, freshly cold, bits of the mould clinging to it, small and fine, it lay in the palm of his shapely hand.
"If you don't want the boots, Bob," he said, "I think I'll go out in them."
The legal owner of the boots went out in them into the damp, bitter cold. His big figure cut along through the mist and he limped over the Pont des Arts towards the Louvre. All Paris seemed to him blue with cold. The river flowed between its banks with suppressed intent and powerful westward rush, and its mighty flow expressed indifference to the life and passion of existence along its shores.
He leaned a moment on the bridge. Paris was personal to him and the river was like its soul. He was faint from lack of food and overstrain.
In the Louvre, other men of conglomerate costumes as well as he sought the warm rooms. Tramps, vagrants in pitiful rags, affected interest in the works of art, resting their worn figures on the benches, exulting in the public welcome of the museum. Fairfax was more presentable, if as poor. He wore a soft black hat of good make and quality, bought in a sporting moment by Dearborn early in his career. Tony wore his own clothes, retained because they were the newest and a soft black scarf, the vogue in the quarter, was tied under his collar in rather an extravagant bow. He wandered aimlessly through the rooms, glanced at the visitors and saw that they were many, and when he had become thoroughly warm,screwed his courage to the sticking point and went out of the front entrance. A little way from the guides he took his place, and from his pocket his figurine. It showed quite as a lily in the foggy light, pale and ashamed. Its nudity appealed more to the sculptor because of this wanton exposure to the vulgar herd. He trembled, began to regret, but offered it, holding it out for sale.
Some dozen people passed him, glanced at him and his small statue, but he would have passed unnoticed had a lady not come slowly down the steps and seen him, stopped and looked at him, though he did not see her until she had approached. He flamed scarlet, covered his statuette and wished that the cobbles of the pavement would open and swallow him.
She was—he thought of it afterward a hundred times—a woman of singular tact and an illumined sympathy, as well as a woman of exquisite comprehension.
"Mr. Rainsford!" she exclaimed. "You have something to sell?" she added, and simply, as though she spoke to an ordinary vendor, yet he saw that as she spoke a lovely colour rose in her cheek under her veil, and he found that he was not ashamed any more.
She put out her hand. It came from a mantle of velvet and a cuff of costly fur—he couldn't have dreamt then how costly. He lifted his hat, bareheaded in the cold, and laid the little figure in her hand.
"How perfectly charming!" she murmured, holding it. And the dryad-like figure, with its slender arms above its head and the faun-like, brilliant little face, seemed perfection to her. She said so. "What a perfect thing! Of course, you have the clay original?"
Fairfax could not speak. The sight of this woman so worldly, elegant, sumptuous, at the first praise of his little statue, he realized that he was selling it, and it struck him as a crime—his creation, his vision, hawking it as a fish-wife might hawk crabs in the public street!
He felt a great humiliation and could have wept—indeed, tears did spring to his eyes and the cold dried them.
Two "sergents de ville" came up to them.
"Pardon, Monsieur," asked one of them, "have you a license?"
Fairfax started, but the lady holding the little statue turned quickly to the officials—
"A license?Pourquoi faire, mes amis?"
"It is against the rules to sell anything in the streets of Paris without a license," said the policeman.
"Well," she exclaimed, "my friend has just made me a gift. This gentleman is a friend of mine for whom I am waiting to take me to my carriage. Allez vous en," she smiled at them, "I will excuse you, and so will Monsieur."
She was so perfectly mistress of the situation that he had nothing to do but leave himself in her hands.
"You will let me take you home," she said, "in whatever direction you are going," and he followed her to her little carriage, waiting before the curb.
She got in, gave the address of his studio to her coachman, and the next thing he knew was that he was rolling over the pavement he had so painfully traversed a few hours before.
She talked to him of the master, Cedersholm, and Antony listened. She talked enthusiastically, admiringly, and he parried her questions as to when and where he had worked with the Swedish sculptor. The statuette lay on her lap.
At the studio door, when Fairfax left her, she said, taking up the self-same gold purse that he had restored to her in the Louvre seven months ago—
"I hope that I have enough money to pay for this treasure, Mr. Rainsford. It's so beautiful that it must be very dear. What is the price?"
And Fairfax, hot all over, warm indeed for the first time in long, stammered—
"Don't speak of price—of course, I don't know you well enough, but if you really like it, please take it."
"Take it!" Mrs. Faversham had cried, "but I mean to—I adore it. Mr. Cedersholm will tell you how valuable it is, but I must pay you for it, my dear Mr. Rainsford."
Holding the carriage door open, his fine face on fire and his blue eyes illumined, he had insisted, and Antony's voice, his personality, his outstretched hand bare, cold, shapely, charmed her and impressed her, and he saw her slowly, unwillingly accept his sudden gift. He had seenher embarrassed suddenly, as he was. Then she had driven away in her carriage, to be lost in the mists with other people who did not matter to him, and poor as he had started out, poorer, for he had not the statuette, he limped down the stairs again and into the street to forage for them both.
He thought whimsically: "I must feed up the whole dramatis personæ of old Bob's play, for he can't get on until he's fed up the cast!"
He limped along the Rue du Bac, his cold hands in his pockets, his head a little bent. But no battle with life now, be it what it would, could compare with his battle in New York. Now, indeed, though he was cold and hungry and tired, he was the inhabitant of a city that he loved, he was working alone for the art he adored. He believed in himself—not once had he yet come to the period of artistic despair.
During these seven months the little personal work he had been able to do had only whetted his desire; he was young, possessed of great talent and of brilliant imagination, and he was happy and hopeful and determined; the physical wants did not weigh on his spirit nor did the long period of labour injure his power of production. He chafed, indeed, but he felt his strength even as he pulled against the material things from which he had to free himself.
And as Fairfax, part of the throng, walked aimlessly up the Rue du Bac with his problems, he walked less alone that night than ever in his life, for he was absorbed in the thought of the woman.
He realized now how keenly he had observed her, that she was very charming and very beautiful. He could have drawn those dear features, the contour of her neck and chin, the poise of her head, the curve of her shoulder, and, imperceptible, but no less real and strong, her grace and charm made her an entity to him, so much so that she actually seemed to have remained by his side, and he almost fancied, as he breathed the misty air, that he breathed again the odour of the scent that she used, sweet and delicate, and that he felt the touch of her velvet sleeve against his coat.
He still had in his possession one object, which, ifpawned, might furnish enough money to pay for a meal. It was a little seal, belonging to his mother, set in old gold.
This afternoon, before leaving the studio, he had thrust it in his waistcoat pocket, in case the little statuette did not sell.
They gave him five francs for it, and he laid in a stock of provisions, and with his little parcel once more he limped up the studio stairs to Dearborn, who, wrapped in the coverlet, waited by the stove.
He told his story, and Dearborn listened delightedly, his literary and dramatic sense pleased by the adventure.
They were talking of the lady when the concierge, toward nine o'clock, tapped at the door and handed Antony a thick blue envelope, inscribed "Mr. Thomas Rainsford" by a woman's hand.
"Tony, old man," said the playwright, as Antony's fingers trembled turning the page, "the romance of a poor young man has begun."
The letter ran as follows:—
"My dear Mr. Rainsford,
"I am anxious to have a small bas-relief of me, to give to Mr. Cedersholm when he shall come over. Would you have time to undertake this work? I can pose when you like."I know how many claims a man of talent has upon his time, and I want to secure some of yours and make it mine. I venture to send this sum in advance. I hope you will not refuse it. Perhaps you will dine with me to-morrow and we will talk things over."Yours faithfully,"Mary Faversham."
"I am anxious to have a small bas-relief of me, to give to Mr. Cedersholm when he shall come over. Would you have time to undertake this work? I can pose when you like.
"I know how many claims a man of talent has upon his time, and I want to secure some of yours and make it mine. I venture to send this sum in advance. I hope you will not refuse it. Perhaps you will dine with me to-morrow and we will talk things over.
"Yours faithfully,"Mary Faversham."
Fairfax read this letter twice—the second time the words were not quite clear. He handed it across the table to his companion silently. The five-hundred-franc bill lay between the plate where the veal had been and the empty coffee cup.
Dearborn, when he had eagerly read the note, glanced up to speak to Fairfax and saw that he had turned away from him. In his figure, as he bowed over, leaning hishead upon his hands, there were the first marks of weariness that Dearborn had ever seen. There had been weariness in the step that limped up the stairs and crossed the room when Fairfax had entered with the meagre bundle of food. Dearborn leaned over and saw his friend's fine profile, and there was unmistakably the mark of fatigue on the face, flushed by fire and lamp-light. Dearborn knew of his companion very little. The two had housed together, come together, bits of driftwood on the river of life, drawn by sympathy in the current, and few questions had been asked. He knew that Rainsford was from New Orleans, that he had studied in New York. Of Antony's life he knew nothing, although he had wondered much.
He said now, lightly, as he handed the letter back, "You haven't been playing perfectly square with me, Tony. I'm afraid you have been wearing the boots under false pretences, but, nevertheless, I guess you will have to wear them to-morrow night, old man."
As Fairfax did not move, Dearborn finished more gravely—
"I would be glad to hear anything you are willing to tell me about it."
Fairfax turned slowly and put the letter back in his pocket. Then leaning across the table, in an undertone, he told Dearborn everything—everything. He spoke quietly and did not linger, sketching for him rapidly his life as far as it had gone. Twice Dearborn rose and fed the stove recklessly with fuel. Once he stood up, took a coverlet and wrapped it around him, and sat blinking like a resurrected mummy. And Fairfax talked till Bella flashed like a red bird across the shadows, lifted her lips to his and was gone. Molly shone from the shadows and passed like light through the open door. And, last of all, Mrs. Faversham came and brought a magic wand and she lingered, for Fairfax stopped here.
He had talked until morning. The dawn was grey across the frosty pane when he rose to throw himself down on his bed to sleep. The five-hundred-franc note lay where he had left it on the table between the empty plate and the empty cup. The fire was dead in the stove and the room was cold.
Dearborn, excited and interested, watched with the visions of Antony's past and the visions of his own creations for a long time. And Fairfax, exhausted by the eventful day, troubled by it, touched by it, watched the vision of a woman coming toward him, coming fatally toward him, wonderfully toward him—but he was tired, and, before she had reached him, he fell asleep.