"Thou, porter," he called to Leighton, "an errand for thee. Go fetch my father. He would not miss this sight."

"What does he say?" asked Leighton.

Lewis blushed as people stopped and added their sparkling eyes to those of the crowd already gathered.

"He calls you a porter, and bids you fetch his father to see the sight."

"Ask him," said Leighton, calmly, "shall I know him who he thinks is his father by his horns?"

Lewis translated innocently enough. The crowd gasped, and then roared with laughter. The youth in Paris clothes turned purple with rage, shook his little cane at Leighton, and burst into abusive language.

"Why," cried Lewis—"why, what's the matter with him?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Leighton, pensively. "And just now he was so dignified!"

A private sedan-chair, borne by four splendid blacks, swung by at a run. As it passed, one of its silk curtains was drawn aside and the face of a woman, curious to see the reason of the crowd, looked out. The face was clear white, blue-veined, red-lipped; under the black eyes were shadows. A slight smile curved the red lips as the shadowy eyes fell upon Leighton and Lewis.

Leighton went tense, like a hound in leash.

"Look, boy!" he cried. "A patrician passes!"

The lady heard, understood. The smile, that was half-disdain, deepened. She bowed slightly, but graciously. The curtain fell.

"Come, boy," said Leighton, "we can't stand that. Let's go find a tailor."

"Dad," said Lewis, "do you know her? She bowed."

"She did, God bless her!" said Leighton. "No, I don't know her; but let's think kindly of her, for she has added a charming memory to life."



CHAPTER XV

Four days later Lewis sat beside his bed, piled high with all the paraphernalia that go to make up a gentleman's wardrobe and toilet. He was very nervous—so nervous that he had passed an hour striding from one side of the small bedroom to the other, making up his mind to try to carry out his father's instructions, which were simply to go to his room and dress. Lewis had never in his life put on a collar or knotted a tie.

He answered a knock on the door with a cry of dismay. Leighton strode into the room.

"Well, what's the matter?"

Lewis looked ruefully from his father's face to the things on the bed and back again. He felt himself flushing painfully. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it.

Suddenly Leighton's face lit up. He laughed.

"Well, well," he cried, "this is splendid! You've given me a new sensation." He yanked a bath-robe from the bed. "Here, you savage, shed those leather togs, but don't lose them. You'll want to take them out and look at them some stuffy day. Now put this on and run to your bath."

When Lewis came back to the room he found most of his things had been packed away in the big, new trunk. On the bed certain garments were laid out. They were laid out in correct order.

Leighton stood beside the bed in a deferential attitude. His face was a blank. "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the dinner-jacket? If you will allow me, I would suggest the flannels. Sultry evening, and Mr. Leighton will be dining on the terrace."

"Yes, I'll wear the flannels," stammered Lewis.

"Your singlet, sir," said Leighton, picking up the undershirt from the bed. Article after article he handed to his son in allotted order. Lewis put each thing on as fast as his nervous hands would let him. He tried to keep his eyes from wandering to the head of the line, where lay collar and tie. The collar had been buttoned to the back of the shirt, but when it came to fastening it in front, Lewis's fingers fumbled hopelessly.

"Allow me, sir," said Leighton. He fastened the collar deftly. "I see you don't like that tie with the flannels, sir. My mistake."

He threw open the trunk, and took out a brown cravat of soft silk. "Your brown scarf, sir. It goes well with the flannels. Will you watch in the glass, sir?" He placed the cravat, measured it carefully, knotted it, and drew it up.

Lewis did not watch in the mirror. His eyes were fixed on his father's mask of a face. He knew that, inside, his father was bubbling with fun; but no ripple showed in his face, no disrespectful twinkle in his eye. Leighton was playing the game. Suddenly, for no reason that he could name, Lewis began to adore his father.

"Will that do, sir?"

"Certainly," stammered Lewis. "Very nicely, thank you"

"Thank you, sir," said Leighton. He handed Lewis the flannel trousers and then the coat.

As Lewis finished putting them on, Leighton whirled on his heel.

"Ready, my boy?" The mask was gone.

Lewis laughed back into his father's twinkling eyes.

"Yes, I'm ready," he said rather breathlessly. He followed his father out of the room. The new clothes gripped him in awkward places, but as he glanced down at the well-pressed flannels, he felt glorified.

That night, while strolling in a back street of the lower town, they discovered a tunnel running into the cliff. At its mouth was a turnstile.

"Shades of Avernus! What's this?" asked Leighton.

Lewis inquired of the gateman.

"It's an elevator to the upper town," he said.

They paid their fare and walked into the long tunnel. At its end they found a prehistoric elevator and a terrific stench. Leighton clapped his handkerchief to his nose and dived into the waiting car. Lewis followed him. An attendant started the car, and slowly they crept up and up, two hundred feet, to the crest of the cliff. As they emerged, Leighton let go a mighty breath.

"Holy mackerel!" he said, "and what was that? Ugh! it's here yet!"

The attendant explained. At the bottom of the shaft was a pit into which sank the great chains of the car. The pit was full of crude castor-oil, cheapest and best of lubricants.

"My boy," said Leighton, as he led the way at a rapid stride toward the hotel, "never confuse the picturesque with the ugly. I can stand a bit of local color in the way of smells, but there's such a thing as going too far, and that went it. We'll prepare at once to leave this town. Would you like to go north or south?"

"I don't know, sir," said Lewis.

"Well, we'll just climb on board that big double-funnel that came in to-day and leave it to her. What do you say?"

They went south. Four days later, in the early morning, Lewis was wakened by a bath-robe hurled at his head.

"Put that on and come up on deck quick!" commanded his father.

Lewis gasped when he reached the deck. They were just entering the harbor. On the left, so close that it seemed to threaten them, loomed the Sugar-Loaf. On the right, the wash of the steamer creamed on the rocks of Santa Cruz. Before them opened the mighty bay, dotted with a hundred islands, some crowned with foliage, others with gleaming, white walls, and one with an aspiring minaret. Between water and sky stretched the city. There was no horizon, for the jagged wall of the Organ Mountains towered in a circle into the misty blue. Heaven and earth were one.

A white line of surf-foam ran along all the edge of the bay. Languorous Aphrodite of the cities of the world, Rio de Janeiro lay naked beyond that line, and gloried. Like a dream of fair woman, her feet plunged in foam, her body reclining against the heights, her arms outstretched, green hills for her pillows, her diadem the shining mountain-peaks, queen of the cities of the earth by the gift of Almighty God, she gleamed beneath the kiss of dawn.

Leighton drew a long, long breath.

"It will take a lot of bad smells to blot the memory of that," he said.

They came to the bad smells in about an hour and a quarter. An hour later they left the custom-house. Then, each in a rocketing tilbury, driven by a yelling Jehu, they shot through the narrow and filthy streets of the Rio of that far day and drew up, still trembling with fright, at the doors of the Hotel dos Estrangeiros.

"You got here, too!" cried Leighton as Lewis tumbled out of his cab. "We had both wheels on the ground at once three separate times. How about you?"

"I really don't know anything about what happened, sir," said Lewis, grinning. "I was holding on."

"What were they yelling? Did you make anything out of that?" asked Leighton, when they had surveyed their rooms and were washing.

"They were shouting at the people in the way," said Lewis. "My driver yelled only two things. When a colored person was in the way, it was, 'Melt chocolate-drop!' and when he shouted at a white man, it was: 'Clear the way to hell! a foreigner rides with me.'"

"Boy," said Leighton, speaking through several folds of towel and the open connecting-door, "if you ever find your brains running to seed, get a job as a cabman. There's something about a cab, the world over, that breeds wit."



CHAPTER XVI

The Rio of 1888 was seething at the vortex of the wordy battle for emancipation. The Ouvidor, the smart street of the town, so narrow that carriages were not allowed upon it, was the center of the maelstrom. Here crowded politician and planter; lawyers, journalists, and students; conservative and emancipationist.

At each end of the Ouvidor were squares where daily meetings were held the emotional surge of which threatened to lap over into revolution at any moment.

The emotion was real. Youths of twenty blossomed into verse never equaled before or since in the writings of their prolific race. An orator, maddened by the limits of verbal expression, shot himself through the heart to add a fitting period to a thundered phrase. Women forgot their own bondage, and stripped themselves of jewels for the cause.

Leighton and his son, wandering through these scenes, felt like ghosts. They had the certainty that all this had happened before. Their lonely, calm faces drew upon them hostile, wondering stares.

"Got a clean tablet in your mind?" asked Leighton one day as they emerged from an unusually excited scene. "Write this down: Nothing bores one like somebody else's belated emotions. When you've had some woman insist on kissing you after you're tired of her, you'll understand me better. In the meantime, this is bad enough. I can think of only one cure for what we've been through here, and that is a Sunday in London. Let us start."

"London!" breathed Lewis. "Are we going to London?"

"Yes, we are. It's a peculiar fact, well known and long cursed among travelers, that all the steamers in the world arrive in England on Saturday afternoon. We'll get to London for Sunday."

During the long voyage, for the first time since the day on which he met the stranger, and which already seemed of long ago, Lewis had time to think. A sadness settled on him. What were they doing at Nadir on this starry night? Were the goats corraled? Who had brought them in? Was mammy crooning songs of low-swinging chariots and golden stairs? Was Mrs. Leighton still patiently sewing? The Reverend Orme, was he still sitting scowling and staring and staring? And Natalie? Was she there, or was she gone, married? He drew a great, quivering sigh.

Leighton looked around.

"Trying to pick up a side-tracked car?"

Lewis smiled faintly, but understandingly.

"It's not quite side-tracked—yet," he said.

"Ah, boy, never look back," said Leighton. "But, no; do. Do look back. You're young yet. Tell me about it."

Then for a long time Lewis talked of Nadir: of the life there, of the Reverend Orme, grown morose through unnamed troubles; of Mrs. Leighton, withered away till naught but patience was left; of happy mammy, grown sad; of Natalie, friend, playmate, and sacrifice.

"So they wanted to marry your little pal into motherhood twenty times over, ready-made," said Leighton. "And you fought them, told 'em what you thought of it. You were right, boy; you were right. The wilderness must have turned their heads. But you ought to have stayed with it. Why didn't you stay with it? You're no quitter."

"There were things I said to the Reverend Orme," said Lewis, slowly—"things I knew, that made it impossible for me to stay."

"Things you knew? What things?"

Lewis did not answer.

* * * * *

It was on a gray Sunday that they entered London. In a four-wheeler, the roof of which groaned under a pyramid of baggage, they started out into the mighty silence of deserted streets. The plunk! plunk! of the horse's shod hoofs crashed against the blank walls of the shuttered houses and reverberated ahead of them until sound dribbled away down the gorge of the all-embracing nothing. Gray, gray; heaven and earth and life were gray.

Lewis felt like crying, but Leighton came to the rescue. He was in high spirits.

"Boy, look out of the window. Is there anywhere in the world a youth spouting verse on a street corner?"

"No," said Lewis.

"Or an orator shooting himself to give point to an impassioned speech?"

"No."

"Or women shaking their bangles into the melting-pot for the cause of freedom?"

"No."

"I should say not. This is Sunday in London. Take off your hat. You are in the graveyard of all the emotions of the earth."

Up one flight of stairs, over a tobacconist's shop, Leighton raised and dropped the massive bronze knocker on a deep-set door. He saw Lewis's eyes fix on the ponderous knocker.

"Strong door to stand it, eh? They don't make 'em that way any more."

The door swung open. A man-servant in black bowed as Leighton entered.

"Glad to welcome you back, sir. I hope you are well, sir."

"Thanks, Nelton, I'm well as well. So is Master Lewis. Got his room ready? Show him the bath."

Lewis, looking upon Nelton, suddenly remembered a little room in the Sul Americano at Bahia. He felt sure that when Nelton opened his mouth it would be to say, "Will you be wearing the white flannels to-night, sir, or the dinner-jacket?"

By lunch-time Leighton's high spirits were on the decline, by four o'clock they had struck bottom. He kept walking to the windows, only to turn his back quickly on what he saw. At last he said:

"D'you know what a 'hundred to one shot' is?"

"No, sir," said Lewis.

"Well," said Leighton, "watch me play one." He sat down, wrote a hurried note, and sent it out by Nelton. "The chances, my boy, are one hundred to one that the lady's out of town."

When Nelton came back with an answer, Leighton scarcely stopped to open it.

"Come on, boy," he called, and was off. By the time Lewis reached the street, his father was stepping into a cab. Lewis scrambled after him.

"Doesn't seem proper, Dad, to rush through a graveyard this way."

"Graveyard? It isn't a graveyard any more. I'll prove it to you in a minute."

It was more than a minute before they pulled up at a house that seemed to belie Leighton's promise. Its door was under a massive portico the columns of which rose above the second story. The portico was flanked by a parapeted balcony, upon which faced, on each side, a row of French windows, closed and curtained, but not shuttered.



CHAPTER XVII

Leighton rang. The door was opened by a man in livery. So pompous was he that Lewis gazed at him open-mouthed. He could hardly tear his eyes from him to follow his father, who was being conducted by a second footman across the glassy, waxed hall into a vast drawing-room.

The drawing-room might have been a tomb for kings, but Lewis felt more awed by it than depressed. It was a room of distances. Upon its stately walls hung only six paintings and a tapestry. Leighton did not tell his son that the walls carried seven fortunes, because he happened to be one of those who saw them only as seven things of joy.

There were other things in the room besides the pictures: a few chairs, the brocade of which matched the tapestry on the wall; an inlaid spinet; three bronzes. Before one of the bronzes Lewis stopped involuntarily. From its massive, columned base to the tip of the living figure it was in one piece. Out of the pedestal itself writhed the tortured, reaching figure—aspiring man held to earth. Lewis stretched out a reverent hand as though he would touch it.

The lackey had thrown open a door and stood waiting. Leighton turned and called:

"Come on, boy."

Lewis followed them through a second drawing-room and into a library. Here they were asked to sit. Never had Lewis dreamed of such a room. It was all in oak—in oak to which a century of ripening had given a rare flower.

There was only one picture, and that was placed over the great fireplace. It was the portrait of a beautiful woman—waves of gray hair above a young face and bright black eyes. The face laughed at them and at the rows upon rows of somber books that reached from floor to ceiling.

Before the fireplace were two leather chairs and a great leather couch. At each end of the couch stood lighted lamps, shaded to a deep-amber glow.

The lackey returned.

"Her ladyship waits for you in her room, sir."

Leighton nodded, and led Lewis down a short hall. The library had been dark, the hall was darker. Lewis felt depressed. He heard his father knock on a door and then open it. Lewis caught his breath.

The door had opened on a little realm of light. Fresh blue and white cretonnes and chintzes met his unaccustomed eyes; straight chairs, easy-chairs, and deep, low comfy chairs; airy tables, the preposterously slender legs of which looked frail and were not; books, paper-backed, and gay magazines; a wondrous, limpid cheval-glass.

Across the farther side of the room was a very wide window. Through its slender gothic panes one saw a walled lawn and a single elm. Beside the window and half turned toward it, so that the light fell across her face, sat the woman of the portrait.

"How do!" she cried gaily to Leighton, and held out her hand. She did not rise.

"H lne," said Leighton, "your room's so cursedly feminine that it's like an assault for a man to enter it."

"I can't give you credit for that, Glen," said the lady, laughing. "You've had a year to think it up. Where have you been? That's right. Sit down, light up, and talk."

Leighton nodded over his shoulder at Lewis.

"Been fetching him."

"So this is the boy, is it?" The bright eyes stopped smiling. For an instant they became shrewd. They swept Lewis from head to foot and back again. Lewis bowed, and then stood very straight. He felt the color mounting in his cheeks. The smile came back to the lady's eyes.

"Sit down, boy," she said.

For an hour Lewis sat on the edge of a chair and listened to a stream of questions and chatter. The chatter was Greek to him. It skimmed over the surface of things like a swift skater over thin ice. It never broke into deep waters, but somehow you knew the deep waters were there.

At last Leighton arose.

"Boy," he said, "come here. This lady is my pal. There are times when a man has to tell things to a woman. That's what women are for. When you feel you've got to tell things to a woman, you come and tell them to H lne. Don't be afraid of that peacock of a doorman; push him over. He's so stiff he'll topple easy."

"Oh, please don't ever!" cried the lady, turning to Lewis. "I'll give you money to tip him." She turned back to Leighton. "They're so hard to get with legs, Glen."

"Legs be hanged!" said Leighton. "Our age is trading civility for legs. The face that welcomes you to a house should be benign——"

"There you go," broke in the lady. "If you'd think a minute, you would realize that we don't charter doormen to welcome people, but to keep them out." She turned to Lewis. "But not you, boy. You may come any time except between nine and ten. That's when I have my bath. What's your name? I can't call you boy forever."

"Lewis."

"Well, Lew, you may call me H lne, like your father. It'll make me feel even younger than I am."

"H lne is a pretty name," said Lewis.

"None of that, young man," said Leighton. "You'll call H lne my Lady."

"That's a pretty name, too," said Lewis.

"Yes," said the lady, rising and holding out her hand, "call me that—at the door."

"Dad," said Lewis as they walked back to the flat, "does she live all alone in that big house?"

Leighton came out of a reverie.

"That lady, Lew, is Lady H lne Derl. She is the wife of Lord Derl. You won't see much of Lord Derl, because he spends most of his time in a sort of home for incurables. His hobby is faunal research. In other words, he's a drunkard. Bah! We won't talk any more about that."



CHAPTER XVIII

A few months later, when Lewis had very much modified his ideas of London, he was walking with his father in the park at the hour which the general English fitness of things assigns to the initiated. A very little breaking in and a great deal of tailoring had gone a long way with Lewis. Men looked at father and son as though they thought they ought to recognize them even if they didn't. Women turned kindly eyes upon them.

The morning after Lady Derl took Lewis into her carriage in the park she received three separate notes from female friends demanding that she "divvy up." Knowing women in general and the three in special, she prepared to comply. Often Lewis and his father had been summoned by a scribbled note for pot-luck with Lady Derl; but this time it was a formal invitation, engraved.

Lewis read his card casually. His face lighted up. Leighton read his with deeper perception, and frowned.

"Already!" he grunted. Then he said: "When you've finished breakfast, come to my den. I want to talk to you."

Lewis found his father sitting like a judge on the bench, behind a great oak desk he rarely used. An envelope, addressed, lay before him. He rang for Nelton and sent it out.

"Sit down," he said to Lewis. "Where did you get your education? By education I don't mean a knowledge of knives, forks, and fish-eaters. That's from Ann Leighton, of course. Nor do I mean the power of adding two to two or reciting A B C D, etc. By education a gentleman means skill in handling life."

"And have I got it?" asked Lewis, smiling.

"You meet life with a calmness and deftness unusual in a boy," said Leighton, gravely.

"I—I don't know," began Lewis. "I've never been educated. By the time I was nine I knew how to read and write and figure a little. After that—you know—I just sat on the hills for years with the goats. I read the Reverend Orme's books, of course."

"What were the books?"

"There weren't many," said Lewis. "There was the Bible, of course. There was a little set of Shakspere in awfully fine print and a set of Walter Scott."

Leighton nodded. "The Bible is essential but not educative until you learn to depolarize it. Shakspere—you'll begin to read Shakspere in about ten years. Walter Scott. Scott—well—Scott is just a bright ax for the neck of time. What else did you read?"

"I read 'The City of God' but not very often."

For a second Leighton stared; then he burst into laughter. He checked himself suddenly.

"Boy," he said, "don't misunderstand. I'm not laughing at the book; I'm laughing at your reading St. Augustine even 'not very often!'"

"Why shouldn't you laugh?" asked Lewis, simply. "I laughed sometimes. I remember I always laughed at the heading to the twenty-first book."

"Did you?" said Leighton, a look of wonder in his face. "What is it? I don't quite recollect the headings that far."

"'Of the eternal punishment of the wicked in hell, and of the various objections urged against it,'" quoted Lewis, smiling.

Leighton grinned his appreciation.

"There is a flavor about unconscious humor," he said, "that's like the bouquet to a fine wine: only the initiated catch it. I'm afraid you were an educated person even before you read St. Augustine. Did he put up a good case for torment? You see, you've found me out. I've never read him."

"His case was weak in spots," said Lewis. "His examples from nature, for instance, proving that bodies may remain unconsumed and alive in fire."

"Yes?" said Leighton.

"He starts out, 'if, therefore the salamander lives in fire, as naturalists have recorded——' I looked up salamander in the dictionary."

Lewis's eyes were laughing, but Leighton's grew suddenly grave. "Poor old chap!" he said. "He didn't know that time rots the sanest argument. 'Oh... that mine adversary had written a book,' cried one who knew."

Leighton sat thoughtful for a moment, then he threw up his head.

"Well," he said, "we'll give up trying to find out how you got educated. Let's change the subject. Has it occurred to you that at any moment you may be called upon to support yourself?"

"It did once," said Lewis, "when I started for Oeiras. Then I met you. You haven't given me time or—or cause to think about it since. I'm—I'm not ungrateful——"

"That's enough," broke in Leighton. "Let's stick to the point. It's a lucky thing for the progress of the world that riches often take to the wing. It may happen to any of us at any time. The amount of stupidity that sweating humanity applies to the task of making a living is colossal. In about a million years we'll learn that making a living consists in knowing how to do well any necessary thing. It's harder for a gentleman to make a living than for a farm-hand. But—come with me."

He took Lewis to a certain Mecca of mighty appetites in the Strand. Before choosing a table, he made the round of the roasts, shoulders and fowl. They were in great domed, silver salvers, each on a barrow, each kept hot over lighted lamps.

Leighton seated himself and ordered.

"Now, boy, without staring take a good look at the man that does the carving."

One of the barrows was trundled to their table. An attendant lifted the domed cover with a flourish. With astounding rapidity the carver took an even cut from the mighty round of beef, then another. The cover was clapped on again, and the barrow trundled away.

"You saw him?" asked Leighton.

Lewis nodded.

"Well, that chap got through twenty thousand a year,—pounds, not dollars,—capital and income, in just five years. After that he starved. I know a man that lent him half a crown. The borrower said he'd live on it for a week. Then he found out that, despite being a gentleman, there was one little thing he could do well. He could make a roast duck fall apart as though by magic, and he could handle a full-sized carving-knife with the ease and the grace of a duchess handling a fan. Wow he's getting eight hundred a year—pounds again—and all he can eat."

From the eating-house Leighton took Lewis to his club. He sought out a small room that is called the smoking-room to this day, relic of an age when smokers were still a race apart. In the corner sat an old man reading. He was neatly dressed in black. Beside him was a decanter of port.

Leighton led the way back to the lounge-room.

"Well, did you see him?"

"The old man?" said Lewis. "Yes, I saw him."

"That's Old Ivory," said Leighton. "He's an honorable. He was cursed by the premature birth—to him—of several brothers. In other words, he's that saddest of British institutions, a younger son. His brothers, the other younger sons, are still eating out of the hand of their eldest brother, Lord Bellim. But not Old Ivory. He bought himself an annuity ten years ago. How did he do it? Well, he had enough intelligence to realize that he hadn't much. He decided he could learn to shoot well at fifty yards. He did. Then he went after elephants, and got 'em, in a day when they shipped ivory not by the tusk, but by the ton, and sold it at fifteen shillings a pound." As they walked back to the flat, Leighton said: "Now, take your time and think. Is there anything you know how to do well?"

"Nothing," stammered Lewis—"nothing except goats."

"Ah, yes, goats," said Leighton, but his thoughts were not on goats. Back in his den, he took from a drawer in the great oak desk the kid that Lewis had molded in clay and its broken legs, for another had gone. He looked at the fragments thoughtfully. "To my mind," he said, "there is little doubt but that you could become efficient at terra-cotta designing; you might even become a sculptor."

"A sculptor!" repeated Lewis, as though he voiced a dream.

Leighton paid no attention to the interruption. "I hesitate, however, to give you a start toward art because you carry an air of success with you. One predicts success for you too—too confidently. And success in art is a formidable source of danger."

"Success a source of danger, Dad?"

"In art," corrected Leighton.

"Yesterday," he continued, "you wanted to stop at a shop window, and I wouldn't let you. The window contained an inane repetition display of thirty horrible prints at two and six each of Lalan's 'Triumph.'" Leighton sprang to his feet. "God! Poster lithographs at two and six! Boy, Lalan's 'Triumph' was a triumph once. He turned it into a mere success. Before the paint was dry, he let them commercialize his picture, not in sturdy, faithful prints, but in that—that rubbish."

Leighton strode up and down the room, his arms behind him, his eyes on the floor.

"Taking art into the poor man's home, they call it. Bah! If you multiply the greatest glory that the genius of man ever imprisoned, and put it all over the walls of your house,—bath, kitchen and under the bed,—you'll find the mean level of that glory is reduced to the terms of the humblest of household utensils."

A smile nickered in Lewis's eyes, but Leighton did not look up.

"Art is never a constant," he continued. "It feeds on spirit, and spirit is evanescent. A truly great picture should be seen by the comparative few. What every one possesses is necessarily a commonplace.

"And now, to get back. I have never talked seriously to you before; I may never do it again. The essence, the distinctive finesse, of breeding, lies in a trained gaiety and an implied sincerity. But what I must say to you is this: Even in this leveling age there are a few of us who look with terror upon an incipient socialism; who believe money as money to be despicable and food and clothing, incidental; who abhor equality, cherish sorrow and suffering and look uponeducation—knowledge of living before God and man—as the ultimate and only source of content. That's a creed. I'd like to have you think on it. I'd like to have my boy join the Old Guard. Do you begin to see how success in art may become a danger?"

"Yes," said Lewis, "I think I do. I think you mean that—that in selling art one is apt to sell one's self."

"H—m—m!" said Leighton, "you are older than I am. I'll take you to Paris to-morrow."

Nelton knocked, and threw open the door without waiting for an answer.

"Her ladyship," he announced.

Lady Derl entered. She was looking very girlish in a close-fitting, tailored walking-suit. The skirt was short—the first short skirt to reach London. Beneath it could be seen her very pretty feet. They walked excitedly.

Lady Derl was angry. She held a large card in her hand. She tore it into bits and tossed it at Leighton's feet.

"Glen," she said, "don't you ever dare to send me one of your engraved 'regrets' again. Why—why you've been rude to me!"

Leighton hung his head. For one second Lewis had the delightful sensation of taking his father for a brother and in trouble.

"H lne," said Leighton. "I apologize humbly and abjectly. I thought it would amuse you."

"Apologies are hateful," said Lady Derl. "They're so final. To see a fine young quarrel, in the prime of life, die by lightning—sad! sad!" She started drawing off her gloves. "Let's have tea." As she poured tea for them she asked, "And what's the real reason you two aren't coming to my dinner?"

Leighton picked up the maimed kid and laid it on the tea-tray. He nodded toward Lewis.

"He made it, I'm going to gamble a bit on him."

"Poor little thing!" said Lady Derl, poking the two-legged kid with her finger.

"I'm going to put him under Le Brux,—Saint Anthony,—if he'll take him," continued Leighton. "We leave for Paris to-morrow."

"Under 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. "It is only a trifle. Take it. It is thine."

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Leighton. "You lend me the arm, and I'll lend you a thousand francs."

"Done!" cried Le Brux, with a laugh that shook heaven and earth. "Ah, rascal, thou knowest that I never pay."

As they went the rounds of the atelier, Lewis saw that his father was growing nervous. Finally, Leighton drew from his pocket the little kid and its two broken legs. He held the lot out to Le Brux. The fragments seemed to dwindle to pin-points in Le Brux's vast hand.

"Well," he asked, "what's this?"

Leighton nodded toward Lewis,

"My boy made that."

Le Brux glanced down at his hand. A glint of interest lighted his eyes and passed. Then a tremendous frown darkened his brow.

"A pupil, eh? Bah!" With his thumb and forefinger he crushed the kid to powder. "I'll take no pupil."

Lewis gulped in dismay at seeing his kid demolished, but not so Leighton. He had noted the glint of interest. He turned on Le Brux.

"You'll take no pupil, eh? All right, don't. But you'll take my son. You shall and you will."

"I will not," growled Le Brux.

"Maitre" began Leighton—"but whom am I calling Matre? What are you? D'you know what you are?" He shook his finger in Le Brux's face. "You think you're a creator, but you're not. You're nothing but a palimpsest, the record of a single age. What are your works but one man's thumb-print on the face of time? Here I am giving you a chance to be a creator, to breed a live human that will carry on the torch—that will—"

Le Brux had seated himself heavily on the couch. He held his massive head between his hands and groaned.

"Ah, Letonne," he interrupted, "our old friendship is dead—dead by violence. Friends have said things to me before,—called me names,—and I have stood it. But none of them ever dared call me a palimpsest. Thou hast called me a palimpsest!"

Leighton seemed not to hear.

"Somebody," he continued, "that will carry on the mighty tradition of Le Brux. I could take a pupil to any one of a lot of whipper-snappers that fondle clay, but my son I bring to you. Why? Because you are the greatest living sculptor? No. No great sculptor ever made another. If my boy's to be a sculptor, the only way you could stop him would be to choke him to death."

"I hadn't thought of that," broke in Le Brux, with a look of relief. "If he bothers me, eh? It would be easy."

In a flash Leighton was all smiles.

"So," he said, "it is settled. Lewis you stay here. If he throws you out, come back again."

"Eh! eh!" cried Le Brux, "not so fast. Listen. This is the most I can do. I'll let him stay here. I'll give him the room down the hall that I rent to keep any one else out, and—and—I'll use him for a model."

Leighton shrugged his shoulders.

"So, let it be so," he said. "The boy will make his own way into your big, hollow heart, and use it for a playroom. But just remember, Matre, that he is a boy—my boy. If he is to go in for all this,"—Leighton waved his hand at the casts,—"I want him to start in with a man who sees art and art only, a man who didn't turn beast the first time he realized God didn't create woman with petticoats."

Le Brux's eyes bulged with comprehension. He thumped his resounding chest.

"Me!" he cried—"me, a wet nurse!" He yanked open another button of his smock. "Behold me! Have I the attributes?"

Leighton turned his back on him.

"Now you are ranting," he said. He picked up an old newspaper from the floor and started to wrap up the cast he had bought. "Now listen, Maitre. Go and dress yourself for a change. The boy and I will spend a few hours looking for a fiacre that will stand the weight. Then we'll come back, and I'll take you out for a drive to a place where you can remind yourself what a tree looks like. I'll also give you a dinner that you couldn't order in an hour with Careme holding your hand."

"Ah, mon enfant," sighed Le Brux, folding his hands across his stomach, "thou hast struck me below the belt. Thou knowest that my memory is not so short but what I will dine with thee."

When at seven o'clock the three sat down at a table which, like everything else that came in contact with Le Brux, seemed a size too small, Leighton said to his guest:

"Maitre, it has been my endeavor to provide to-night a single essence from each of the five great epochs of modern cookery."

"Yes, my child?" said Le Brux, gravely, but with an expectant gleam in his eye.

"In no branch of science," continued Leighton, "have progress and innovation been so constantly associated as in gastronomy, and we shall consequently abandon the rule of the savants of the last generation and proceed from the light to the less light and then to the rich."

"I agree," said Le Brux.

Leighton nodded to the attendant. Soup was served.

"Creme d'asperges a la reine," murmured Le Brux. "Friend, is it not a source of regret that with the exception of the swallows'-nest extravaganza and your American essence of turtle, no soup has yet been invented the price of which is not within the reach of the common herd? I predict that even this dream of a master will become a commonplace within a generation."

"I am sorry," said Leighton, "that the boy can't understand you. Your remark caps an argument I had with him the other day on the evanescent spirit in art."

The fish arrived.

"The only fish," remarked Leighton, "that can properly be served without a sauce."

"And why?" said Le Brux, helping himself to the young trout fried in olive oil and simply garnished with lemon. "I will tell thee. Because God himself hath half prepared the dish, giving to this dainty creature a fragrance which assails the senses of man and adds to eating a vision of purling brooks and overhanging boughs." Suddenly, with his fork half-way to his mouth, he paused, and glared at Lewis, who was on the point of helping himself. "Sacrilege!"

Leighton looked up.

"My old one, you are perhaps right." He turned to Lewis. "Better skip the fish." At the next dish he remarked, "Following the theory that a dinner should progress as a child learning to walk, Maitre, I have at this point dared to introduce an entremets—cepes francs a la tete noire——"

"A la bordelaise," completed Le Brux, his nose above the dish. He helped Leighton to half of its contents and himself to the rest.

"Have patience, my old one," cried Leighton, "the boy may have an uneducated palate, but he is none the less possessed of a sublobular void that demands filling at stated intervals."

"Bah!" cried Le Brux, "order him a dish of tripe with onions—and vin ordinaire. But he'll have to sit at another table."

"No," said Leighton, "that won't do. We'll let him sit here and watch us and when they come, we'll give him all the sweets and we'll watch him."

"Agreed," said Le Brux.



CHAPTER XX

If events had been moving rapidly with Lewis, they had by no means been at a standstill at Nadir since that troubled day on which he had rebelled, quarreled, and fled, leaving behind him wrath and tears and awakened hearts where all had been apathy and somnolence.

Many happenings at Nadir were dated from the day that Lewis went away. Late that night mammy and Mrs. Leighton, aided by trembling Natalie, had had to carry the Reverend Orme from his chair in the school-room to his bed. The left side of his face was drawn grotesquely out of line, but despite the disfigurement, there was a look of peace in his ravaged countenance, as of one who welcomes night joyfully and calmly after a long battle.

Perhaps it was this look of peace that made Ann Leighton regard this latest as the lightest of all the calamities that had fallen upon her frail shoulders. She felt that in a measure the catastrophe had brought the Reverend Orme back—nearer to her heart. Her heart, which had seemed to atrophy and shrivel from disuse since the poignant fullness of the last days of Shenton, was suddenly revivified. Love, pity, tender care,—all the discarded emotions,—returned to light up her withered face and give it beauty. Night and day she stayed beside the Reverend Orme, reading aright his slightest movement.

To Natalie one need stood out above all others—the need for Lewis. At first she waited for news of him, but none came; then she sought out Dom Francisco. Word was passed to the cattlemen. They said Lewis had been bound for Oeiras. A messenger was sent to Oeiras. He came back with the news that Lewis had never arrived there. He had been traced half-way. After that no one on the long straight trail had seen the boy. The wilderness had swallowed him.

Dom Francisco came almost daily to see the Reverend Orme. "Behold him!" he cried at his first visit, aghast at the havoc the stroke had played with the tall frame. "He is but a boy, he has fathered but two children—and yet—behold him! He is broken!" The sight of the Reverend Orme, suddenly grown pitifully old, seemed to work on the white-haired, but sturdy, cattle-king by reflection. He, too, grew old suddenly.

Natalie was the first to notice it. She began to nurse the old man as she nursed her father,—to treat him as she would a child. When one day he spoke almost tremulously of the marriage that was to be, she did not even answer him, contenting herself with the smile with which one humors extreme youth clamoring for the moon. Gradually, without any discussion or open refusal on the part of Natalie, it became understood not only to Dom Francisco, but to all the circle at Nadir, that she would never marry the old cattle-king.

The sudden departure of Lewis, the Reverend Orme's breakdown, with its intimate worry displacing all lesser cares, the absorption of Ann Leighton as her husband's constant attendant—these things made of Natalie a woman in a night. She assumed direction of the house, and calmly ordered mammy around in a way that warmed that old soul, born to cheerful servitude. She hired a goatherd and rigidly oversaw his handiwork. Then she approached Dom Francisco one evening as he sat at her father's bedside and told him that he must find a purchaser for the goats—all of them.

The Reverend Orme, although he heard, took no interest in any temporal affair. Mrs. Leighton looked up and asked mildly:

"Why, dear?"

"Because we need money," said Natalie. "No doctor would come here. We must take father away."

No one recoiled from the idea; but it was new to them all except Natalie. It took days and days for it to sink in. It was on Dom Francisco that Natalie most exerted herself. He had aged, and age had made him weak. He fell a slow, but easy, prey to her youth, grown sweetly dominant. He himself would arrange to buy the enormous herd of goats, the greatest in the country-side. And, finally, with a great shrinking from the definite implication, he agreed to buy back Nadir as well.

No mere argument could have led the old man to such a concession. It was love—love for these strangers that he had cherished within his gates, love for the gloomy man whom he had seen young and then old, love for Ann and Natalie and mammy, with their quiet ways, love for the very way of life of all of them—a way distantly above anything he had ever dreamed before their coming, that drove him, almost against his will, to speed their parting. He sent for money. He himself spent long, wistful hours preparing the ox-wagon, the litter, and the horses that were to bear them away.

Then one night the Reverend Orme slept and awoke no more. In the morning Natalie went into the room and found her mother sitting very still beside the bed, one of the Reverend Orme's hands in both of hers. Tears followed each other slowly down her cheeks. She did not brush them away.

"Mother!" cried Natalie, in the first grip of premonition.

"Hush, dear!" said Mrs. Leighton. "He is gone."

They buried him at the very top of the valley, where the eye, guided by the parallel hills, sought ever and again the great mountain thirty miles away. In that clear air the distant mountain seemed very near. There were those who said they could see the holy cross upon its brow.

That night Mrs. Leighton and mammy sat idle and staring in the house. Suddenly they had realized that for them the years of tears had passed. They looked at each other and wondered by what long road calm had come to them. Not so Natalie. Natalie was out in the night, out upon the hills.

She climbed the highest of them all. As she stumbled up the rise, she lifted her eyes to the stars. The stars were very high, very far, very cold. They struck at her sight like needles.

Natalie covered her eyes. She stood on the crest of the hill. Her glorious hair had fallen and wrapped her with its still mantle. Her slight breast was heaving. She could hear her struggling heart pounding at its cage. She drew a long breath. With all the strength: of her young lungs she called: "Lew, where are you? O, Lew, you must come! O, Lew, I need you!"

The low hills gave back no echo. It was not silence that swallowed her desperate cry, but distance, overwhelming distance. She stared wide-eyed across the plain. Suddenly faith left her. She knew that Lewis, could not hear. She knew that she was alone. She crumpled into a little heap on the top of the highest hill, buried her face in her soft hair, and sobbed.

The conviction that their wilderness held Lewis no longer brought a certain strength to Natalie's sudden womanhood. It was as though Fate had cried to her, "The burden is all thine; take it up," and with the same breath had given her the sure courage that comes with renunciation. She answered Dom Francisco's wistful questioning before it could take shape in words.

"We cannot stay," she said. "We must go. You will still help us to go."

Nature's long silences breed silence in man. Dom Francisco ceased to question even with his eyes. He made all ready, delivered them into the hands of trusted henchmen, and bade them God's speed. They struck out for the sea, but not by the long road that Lewis and the stranger had followed. There was a nearer Northern port. Toward it they set their faces, Consolation Cottage their goal.



CHAPTER XXI

Three weeks to a day from the time he had left Lewis in Paris, as Nelton was serving him with breakfast, Leighton received a telegram that gave him no inconsiderable shock. The telegram was from Le Brux.

"Come at once," it said; "your son has killed me."

Leighton steadied himself with the thought that Le Brux was still alive enough to wire before he said:

"Nelton, I'm off for Paris at once. You have half an hour to pack and get me to Charing Cross."

Nine hours later he was taking the stairs at Le Brux's two steps at a time. As he approached the atelier, he heard sighing groans. He threw open the door without knocking. Stretched on the couch was the giant frame, wallowing feebly like a harpooned whale at the last gasp.

"Matre!" cried Leighton.

The sculptor half raised himself, turned a worn face on Leighton, and then burst into a tremendous laugh—one of those laughs that is so violent as to be painful.

"Ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! ho!" he roared, and fell back upon his side.

Leighton felt somebody pecking at his arm. He turned, to find the old concierge beside him.

"Oh, sir," she almost wept, "can't you do something? He has been like that all day."

"Go," he said, "bring me a pail of water." He stood watching Le Brux until she returned. "Now," he said, "go out and close the door after you."

"Don't be rough with him," sighed the fat concierge as she waddled toward the door, drying her hands on her apron.

"Le Brux," said Leighton, "Le Brux!"

"Yes, I hear," gasped the sculptor, his eyes tight shut.

"Le Brux, where is your wound?"

"My wound? Ha! my wound! He would know where is my wound! Here, here, my old one, here!" He passed his two hands over his shaking ribs.

"Well, then," said Leighton, "take that!" and he dashed the pail of water over the prostrate giant.

Le Brux gasped, gulped, and then sat up on the couch. He suddenly became very grave. Water trickled off his chin upon his hairy chest. The soaked smock clung to his arms and legs, accentuating the tremendous muscles. "M'sieu' Letonne," he said, with alarming calm, "you have committed an unpardonable impertinence. At the same time you have unwittingly saved my life. You have heard of men, strong men, laughing themselves to death?"

Leighton, who had seated himself, bowed.

"Well," continued Le Brux, "I can assure you that you and your pail of slops arrived only in time to avert a tragedy. That fact entitles itself to recognition, and I am consequently going to tell you all that has happened before we part—definitely."

Leighton bowed again.

"As you prophesied, your boy won his way into my foolish heart. I used him as a model frequently, and let him hang around me in my idle moments. I even gave him clay to play with, and he played with it to some effect, his great fault—and it is a very great one—being a tendency to do things in miniature. I reproved him good-naturedly—for me, and he so far improved as to model a horse—the size of the palm of your hand."

Leighton bowed once more in recognition of the pause.

"One day," continued Le Brux, "the boy rushed in here without knocking. He had something to show me. I did not have the hardihood to rebuke him, but, remembering myself in the quality of wet nurse, I was dismayed, for on this very couch lay Cellette—Cellette simple, without garnishings, you understand. She was lying on her front, her chin in her hand, and reading a book. I let her read a book, when I can, for my own peace.

"Well, the boy showed me what he had to show, and that gave me time to collect my wits. I saw him look at Cellette without a tremor, and just as I was deciding to take the moment by the horns, he did it for me. 'Oh,' he said, 'are you working on her? Mon matre, please let me watch!' A vile tongue, English, to understand, but it was easy to read his eyes. I said, 'Watch away, my child,' and I continued to transmit Cellette to the cloud up there in my big group. The boy stood around. When I glanced at the model, his eyes followed. When I worked, he worked with me.

"My old one, you may believe it or not, but I felt that boy's fingers itching all the time. Finally, I chucked a great lump of clay upon the bench yonder, and I said, 'Here, go ahead; you model her, too.' Then—then—he—he said——" Le Brux showed signs of choking. He controlled himself, and continued—"he said, 'I can't model anything, Maitre, unless I feel it first'"

"Letonne, I give you my word of honor that I kept my face. I not only kept my face, but I said to Cellette—she hadn't so much as looked up from her book—I said to her, 'Cellette, this young sculptor would like to model you, but he says he must feel you first.' Cellette looked around at that. You know those gamine eyes of hers that are always sure they'll never see anything new in the world? But you don't. In years Cellette is very young—long after your time. Well, she turned those eyes around, looked the boy over, and said" 'Let the babe feel.' Then she went back to her book.

"I waved the boy to her, gravely, with a working of my fingers that was as plain as French. It said, 'The lady says you may feel.' The boy steps forward, and I pretend to go on with my work."

Le Brux stopped. "Excuse me, my friend," he said nervously. "Will you kindly send for another pail of water?"

Leighton glanced into the pail.

"There's enough left," he said impatiently. "Go on."

"Ah, yes," sighed Le Brux, "go on. Just like that, go on. Well, your boy went on. He felt her head, her arms, her shoulders; you could see his fingers seeking things out. Cellette is a model born—and trained. She stood it wonderfully until he came to the muscles of her back. You know how we all like to have our backs scratched, just like dogs and cats? Well, I don't suppose Cellette had ever happened on just that feeling before. It touched the cat chord. She began to gurgle and—and wriggle. 'Keep still, please,' says the boy, very grave and earnest. And a minute later, 'Keep still, will you?' Then he came to her ribs."

Le Brux's cheeks puffed out, and he showed other signs of distress, but he controlled himself.

"After that," he continued, "things happened more or less at one and the same time. Cellette giggled and squirmed. Then the boy got angry and cried, 'Will you keep still? and grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her! Shook Cellette till her little head went zig-zag-zigzag. It took her the sixteenth part of a second to get to her feet, and when she slapped him I myself saw stars. At the same time I saw her face, and I yelled, 'Run, boy! Run!' For a second he stood paralyzed with wonder,—just long enough for her to get in another slap,—and then, just as she was curving her fingers, he—he ran. Her nails only took a strip out of his jacket! Oh! oh!"

"Maitre," cried Leighton, tears crawling down his cheeks, "don't you dare stop! Go on! Go on Finish now while you have the strength."

"Here they passed and there," groaned Le Brux, pointing at bits of ruin, "then I yelled, 'Boy, don't go out of the door, whatever you do. She'll follow sure, and we'll never hear the last of it.' Then the thought came to me that he was the son of my friend. I lifted up the end of the throne. He shot under it. I let it down quickly. I sat upon it. I laughed—I——"

Le Brux stopped and stared. Leighton, his feet outstretched, his head thrown back, his arms hanging limp, was laughing as he had never laughed before. As quick as a cat, Le Brux reached out for the pail and dashed its remaining contents in Leighton's face.

"I cannot bear an obligation," he said grimly as Leighton spluttered and choked. "Thou savedst my life; I save thine. How is it you say in English? 'One good turn deserves another!'"

"Matre," said Leighton, drying his face and then his eyes, "where is the boy now? He's—he's not still under the throne?"

"I don't know where he is," said Le Brux. "He's not under the throne. I remember, vaguely, it is true, but I remember letting him out. That was this morning. Then I wired to you. Since then I have been laughing myself to death."

Leighton continued to wipe his eyes, but Le Brux had sobered down.

"Talk about my mighty impersonality before the nude?" he cried. "Impersonality! Bah! Mine? Let me tell you that for your boy the nude in the human form doesn't exist any more than a nude snake, fish, dog, cat, or canary exists for you or me. He's the most natural, practical, educated human being I ever came across, and there are several thousand mothers in France that would do well to send their jeunes filles to the school that turned him out. In other words, my friend, your boy is so fresh that I have no mind to be the one to watch him wither or wake up or do any of the things that Paris leads to. I wired for you to take him away."

"We'll have to find him first," said Leighton. "Let's look in his room."

Together they walked down the hall. Leighton opened the door without knocking. He stood transfixed. Le Brux stared over his shoulder. Lewis, with his back to them, was working feverishly at the wet clay piled on a board laid across the backs of two chairs. On Lewis's little bed lay Cellette, front down, her chin in her hand, and reading a book.

"Holy name of ten thousand pigs!" murmured Le Brux.

Lewis turned.

"Why, Dad!" he cried, "I am glad to see you!"

Leighton's heart was in the grip he gave the boy's hand so frankly held out.

"Maitre," remarked Cellette from the bed, "believe me if you can: he is still a babe."

"A babe!" cried Le Brux, catching Lewis with finger and thumb and lifting him away from the board. "I should say he is. Here!" He caught up chunks of wet clay and hurled them at Lewis's dainty model of Cellette. He started molding with sweeps of his thumb. A gigantic, but graceful, leg began to take form. He turned and caught Lewis again and shook him till his head rolled. "Big!" he roared, thumping his chest. "Make it big—like me!"

Leighton returned to London alone.



CHAPTER XXII

Lewis's life in Paris fell into unusual, but not unhappy, lines. It was true that when others were around, Le Brux treated him as though he were a scullion or at least a poor relative living on his bounty, for the great sculptor was in dread lest it be noised about that he had at last taken a pupil. But when they were alone, he made up for all his brutality by a certain tenderness which he was at great pains to dissemble. He had but one phrase of commendation, and it harped back and reminded them both of Leighton. When Le Brux was well pleased with Lewis, he would say, "My son, I shall yet create thee."

It could not be said that master and pupil lived together. Lewis had a room down the hall and the freedom of the great atelier, but he never ate with Le Brux and never accompanied him on his rare outings. From the very first day he had learned that he must fend for himself.

Curiosity in all that was new about him sustained the boy for a few days, but as the fear of getting lost restricted him to the immediate neighborhood of his abode,—a neighborhood where the sign "On parle anglais" never appeared in the shop windows, and where a restaurateur would not deign to speak English even if he knew it,—he gradually became a prey to the most terrible of all lonelinesses—the loneliness of an outsider in a vast, gay city.

At first he did not dare go into a restaurant. When hunger forced him, he would enter a patisserie, point at one thing and another, take without question the change that was handed him, and return to his room to eat. The neighborhood, however, was blessed with a series of second-hand book-shops. One day his eyes fell on an English-French phrase-book. He bought it. He learned the meaning of the cabalistic sign, "Table d'hote. Diner, 2f." He began to dine out.

In those lonely initiative weeks Lewis's mind sought out Nadir and dwelt on it. He counted the months he had been away, and was astounded by their number. Never had time seemed so long and so short. He longed to talk to Natalie, to tell her the dream that had seized upon him and gradually become real. At the little book-shop he bought ink, paper, and pen, and began to write.

It was an enormous letter, for one talked easily to Natalie, even on paper. At the end he begged her to write to him, to tell him all that had happened at Nadir, if, indeed, anything beyond her marriage had occurred to mark the passing months. What about the goats? A whole string of questions about the goats followed, and then, again, was she really married? Was she happy?

The intricacies of getting that letter weighed, properly stamped, and posted were too much for Lewis. He sought aid not from Le Brux, but from Cellette. It took him a long time to explain what he wanted. Cellette stared at him. She seemed so stupid about it that Lewis felt like shaking her again, an impulse that, assisted by memory, he easily curbed.

"But," cried Cellette at last, "it is so easy—so simple! You go to the post, you say, 'Kindly weigh this letter,' you ask how much to put on it, you buy the stamps, you affix them, you drop the letter in the slot. Voila!" She smiled and started off.

Lewis reached out one arm and barred her way.

"Yes, yes," he stammered, "voila, of course." A vague recollection of his father taming Le Brux with a dinner came to his aid. He explained to Cellette that if she would post the letter for him, he would be pleased to take her to dinner.

Then Cellette understood in her own way.

"Ah," she cried brightly, "you make excuses to ask me to dine, eh? That is delicate. It is gallant. I am charmed. Let us go."

She hung on his arm. She chatted. She never waited for an answer. Together they went to the post. People glanced at them and smiled, some nodded; but Cellette's face was upturned toward Lewis's. She saw no one else. It was his evening.

Gradually it dawned upon her that Lewis was really helpless and terribly alone. In that moment she took charge of him as a duck takes charge of an orphaned chick. On succeeding evenings she led him to the water, but she did not try to make him swim.

Parents still comfort themselves with the illusion that they can choose safe guardians for their young. As a matter of fact, guardians of innocence are allotted by Fate. When Fate is kind, she allots the extremes, a guardian who has never felt a sensation or one who has tired of all sensations. The latter adds wisdom to innocence, subtracts it from bliss, and—becomes an ideal.

Fate was kind to Lewis in handing him over to Cellette at the tragic age. Nature had shown him much; Cellette showed him the rest. She took him as a passenger through all the side-shows of life. She was tired of payments in flesh and blood. She found her recompense in teaching him how to talk, walk, eat, take pleasure in a penny ride on a river boat or on top of a bus, and in spending his entire allowance to their best joint profit.

In return Lewis received many a boon. He was no longer alone. He was introduced as an equal to the haunts of the gay world of embryonic art—the only world that has ever solved the problem of being gay without money. From the first he was assumed to belong to Cellette. How much of the assault, the jeers, the buffoonery, the downright evil of initiation, he was saved by this assumption he never knew. Cellette knew, but her tongue was held by shame. All her training had taught her to be ashamed of "being good." If ever the secret of their astounding innocence had got out, professional pride would have forced her to ruin Lewis, body and soul, without a moment's hesitation.

Lewis also learned French—a French that rippled along mostly over shallows, but that had deep pools of art technic, and occasionally flew up and slapped you in the face with a fleck of well-aimed argot.

Weeks, months, passed before Leighton appeared on the scene, summoned by a scribbled note from Le Brux. When greetings were over, Leighton asked:

"Well, what is it this time? How is the boy getting along? Is he going to be a sculptor?"

"You are wise to ask all your questions at once," said Le Brux. "You know I shall talk just as I please. Your boy, just as you said he would, has attacked me in the heart. He is a most entertaining babe. I am no longer wet nurse. Somebody with the attributes has supplanted me—Cellette."

"H—m—m!" said Leighton.

Le Brux held up a ponderous hand.

"Not too fast," he said. "The lady assures me the babe is still on the bottle. Such being the case, I sent for you. They are inseparable. They have put off falling in love so long that, when they do, it will prove a catastrophe for one of them. Take him away for a while. Distort his concentrated point of view."

"That's a good idea," said Leighton. "Perhaps I will."

"As for his work—" Le Brux stepped to the door and locked it. "I wouldn't have him catch us looking at it for anything." He lifted the damp cloth from Lewis's latest bit of modeling, two tense hands, long fingers curved like talons, thumbs bent in. They flashed to the eye the impression of terrific action.

Leighton gazed long at the hands.

"So," he said, "somewhere the boy has seen a murder."

"Ha!" cried Le Brux. "You see it? You see it? He has not troubled to put the throat within that grip but it's there. Ah, it's there! I could see it. You see it. Presto! everybody will see it." He replaced the cloth.

"In a couple of years," he went on, "my work will be done. Let him show nothing, know nothing, till, then."



CHAPTER XXIII

"If it's a fine day to-morrow," said Leighton that evening to Lewis, "we'll spend it in the country. Ever been in the country around here?"

Lewis shook his head.

"I don't believe Cellette knows anything about the country. It would be a great thing, Dad, if we could take her with us. She's shown me around a lot. I'd—I'd like to."

Leighton suppressed a grimace.

"Why not?" he replied cheerfully.

The next day was fine and hot. Leighton decided to take a chance on innovation, and revisit a quiet stretch on the Marne. It was rather a journey to get there, but from the moment the three were settled in their third-class carriage time took to wing. As he listened to Lewis's and Cellette's chatter, the years rolled back for Leighton. He became suddenly young. Lewis felt it. For the second time he had the delightful sensation of stumbling across a brother in his father.

Cellette felt it, too. When they left the station and started down the cool, damp road to the river, she linked a hand in the arm of each of her laughing companions, urged them to a run, and then picked up her little feet for mighty leaps of twenty yards at a time. "Ah," she cried, "c'est joli, d'etre trois enfants!"

How strange the earth smelt! She insisted on stopping and snuffling at every odor. New-mown grass; freshly turned loam; a stack of straw, packed too wet and left to ruin; dry leaves burning under the hot sun into a sort of dull incense—all had their message for her. Even of the country Cellette had a dim memory tucked away in her store of experience.

They came to the river. From a farmer they hired a boat. Cellette wanted to drift down with the stream, but Leighton shook his head. "No, my dear, a day on the river is like life: one should leave the quiet, lazy drifting till the end."

Leighton rowed, and then Lewis. They held Cellette's hands on the oars and she tried to row, but not for long. She said that by her faith it was harder than washing somebody else's clothes.

They chose the shade of a great beech for their picnic-ground. Cellette ordered them to one side, and started to unpack the lunch-basket that had come with Leighton from his hotel. As each item was revealed she cast a sidelong glance at Leighton.

"My old one," she said to him when all was properly laid out, "do not play at youth and innocence any longer. It takes an old sinner to order such a breakfast."

It was a gay meal and a good one, and, like all good meals, led to drowsiness. Cellette made a pillow of Lewis's coat and slept. The afternoon was very hot. Leighton finished his second cigar, and then tapped Lewis on the shoulder. They slipped beyond the screen of the low-limbed beech, stripped, and stole into the river.

At the first thoughtless splash Cellette sprang to her feet.

"Ah!" she cried, her eyes lighting, "you bathe, hein?" She started undoing her bodice.

Leighton stared at her from the water. "What do you do?" he cried in rapid French. "You cannot bathe. I won't allow it."

Cellette paused in sheer amazement that any one should think there was anything she could not do. Then deliberately she continued undoing hooks.

"Why can't I bathe?" she asked out of courtesy or merely because she knew the value of keeping up a conversation.

"You can't bathe," said Leighton, desperately, "because you are too tender, too delicate. These waters are—miasmic. They are full of snakes, too. It was just now that I stepped on one."

"Snakes, eh?" said Cellette, pausing again. "I don't believe you. But—snakes!" She shuddered, and then looked as though she were going to cry with disappointment.

"Don't you mind just this once, Cellette," cried Lewis, blowing like a walrus as he held his place against the current. "We'll come alone some time."

Cellette dried the perspiration from her short upper lip with a little cotton handkerchief.

"Mon dieu, but men are selfish!" she remarked.

Once they were in the boat again, drifting slowly down the shadowy river, she forgot her pet, turned suddenly gay, and began to sing songs that were as foreign to that still sunset scene as was Cellette herself to a dairy. Lewis had heard them before. He looked upon them merely as one of Cellette's moods, but they brought a twisted smile to Leighton's lips. He glanced at the pompous, indignant setting sun and winked. The sun did not wink back; he was surly.

In the train, Cellette, tired and happy, went to sleep. Her head fell on Leighton's shoulder. With dexterous fingers he took off her hat and laid it aside, then he looked at Lewis shrewdly. But Lewis showed no signs, of jealousy. He merely laughed silently and whispered, "Isn't she a funny?"

They began to talk. Leighton told Lewis he was glad that he had worked steadily all these months, that Le Brux spoke well of his work, but thought a rest would help it and him.

"What do you say," he went on, "to a little trip all by ourselves again?"

"It would be splendid," said Lewis, eagerly. Then, after a pause: "It would be fun if we could take Cellette along, too. She'd like it a lot, I know."

"Yes," said Leighton, dryly, "I don't doubt she would." He seemed to ponder over the point. "No," he said finally, "it wouldn't do. What I propose is a man's trip—good stiff walking. We could strike off through Metz and Kaiserslautern, hit the Rhine valley somewhere about Duerkheim, pass through Mannheim with our eyes shut, and get to Heidelberg and the Neckar. Then we could float down the Rhine into Holland. That's the toy-country of the world. Great place to make you smile."

Lewis's eyes watered.

"When—when shall we start?"

"We'll start to start to-morrow," said Leighton. "We've got to outfit, you know."

Two days later they were ready. Cellette kissed them both good-by. Leighton gave her a pretty trinket, a heavy gold locket on a chain. She glanced up sidewise at him through half-closed eyes.

"What's this?" she asked in the tone of the woman who knows she must always pay.

"Just a little nothing from Lewis," said Leighton. "Something to remember him by."

"So," said Cellette, gravely. "I understand. He will not come back. It is well."

Leighton patted her shoulder.

"You are shrewd," he said. Then he added, with a smile: "Too shrewd. He will be back in two months."

A fiacre carried them beyond the fortifications. The cabman smiled at the generous drink-money Leighton gave him, spit on it, and then sat and watched father and son as they stepped lightly off up the broad highway. "Eh!" he called, choking down the curses with which he usually parted from his fares, "good luck! Follow the sun around the earth. It will bring you back."

Leighton half turned, and waved his arm. Then they settled down to the business of walking. They dropped into their place as a familiar part of the open road of only a very few years ago, for they were dressed in the orthodox style: knickerbockers; woolen stockings; heavy footwear; short jackets; packs, such as once the schoolboy used for books; and double-peaked caps.

Shades of a bygone day, where do you skulk? Have you been driven,

Up, up, the stony causeway to the mists above the glare, Where the smell of browsing cattle drowns the petrol in the air?



CHAPTER XXIV

Just before they left Paris a letter had come for Lewis—a big, official envelop, unstamped. He tore it open, full of curiosity and wonder. Out fell a fat inclosure. Lewis picked it up and stared. It is always a shock to see your own handwriting months after you have sent it off on a long journey. Here was his own handwriting on a very soiled envelop, plastered over with postmarks. How quaint was the superscription, how eloquent the distant dates of the postmarks! "For Natalie. At the Ranch of Dom Francisco, on the Road to Oeiras, in the Province of Ceara, Brazil."

The envelop had been cut open. Lewis took out the many sheets and searched them for a sign. None was there. He looked again at the envelop. Across it was stamped a notice of non-delivery on account of deficient address. Then his eyes fell on faint writing in pencil under a postmark. He recognized the halting handwriting of Dom Francisco's eldest girl. "She is gone," she had written. Nothing more.

"Gone?" questioned Lewis. "Gone where? Where could Natalie go?" He read parts of his letter over, and blushed at his enthusiasms of almost a year ago. Almost a year! Leighton called him. He tore up the letter and threw it away. It was time to start. Then had come the good-by to Cellette, and after that the wonders of the road had held his mind in a constantly renewing grip. They still held it.

Leighton was beyond being a guide. He was a companion. When he could, he avoided big cities and monuments. He loved to stop for the night at wayside inns where the accommodations were meager, but ample opportunity was given for a friendly chat with the hostess cook. And if the inn was one of those homely evening meeting-places for old folks, he would say:

"Lew, no country wears its heart on its sleeve, but 'way inside. Let us live here a little while and feel the pulse of France."

When they crossed the border, he sat down under the first shade tree and made Lewis sit facing him.

"This," he said gravely, "is an eventful moment. You have just entered a strange country where cooks have been known to fry a steak and live. There are people that eat the steaks and live. It is a wonderful country. Their cooks are also generally ignorant of the axiomatic mission of a dripping-pan, as soggy fowls will prove to you. But what we lose in pleasing alimentation, we make up in scenery and food for thought. Collectively, this is the greatest people on earth; individually, the smallest. Their national life is the most communal, the best regulated, the nearest socialistic of any in the world, and—they live it by the inch."

One afternoon, after a long climb through an odorous forest of red-stemmed pines, with green-black tops stretching for miles and miles in an unbroken canopy, they came out upon a broad view that entranced with its sense of illusion. Cities, like bunched cattle, dotted the vast plain. Space and the wide, unhindered sweep of the eye reduced their greatness to the dimensions of toy-land.

Leighton and Lewis stood long in silence, then they started down the road that clung to the steep incline. On the left it was overhung by the forest; on the right, earth fell suddenly away in a wooded precipice. As the highway clung to the mountain-side, so did quaint villages cling to the highway. They came to an old Gasthaus, the hinder end of which was buttressed over the brink of the valley.

Here they stopped. Their big, square room, the only guest-chamber of the little inn, hung in air high above the jumbled roofs of Duerkheim. To the right, the valley split to form a niche for a beetling, ruined castle. Far out on the plain the lights of Darmstadt and Mannheim began to blink. Beyond and above them Heidelberg signaled faintly from the opposing hills.

The room shared its aery with a broad, square veranda, trellised and vine-covered. Here were tables and chairs, and here Leighton and Lewis dined. Before they had finished their meal, two groups had formed about separate tables. One was of old men, white-haired, white-bearded, each with his pipe and a long mug of beer. The other was of women. They, too, were old, white-haired. Their faces were not hard, like the men's, but filled with a withered motherliness. The men eyed the two foreigners distrustfully as though they hung like a cloud over the accustomed peace of that informal village gathering.

"All old, eh?" said Leighton to Lewis with a nod. "And sour. Want to see them wake up?"

"Yes," said Lewis.

The woman who served them was young by comparison with the rest. Leighton had discovered that she was an Alsatian, and had profited thereby in the ordering of his dinner. She was the daughter-in-law of the old couple that owned the inn. He turned to her and said in French, so that Lewis could understand:

"Smile but once, dear lady. You serve us as though we were Britishers."

The woman turned quickly.

"And are you not Britishers?"

"No," said Leighton; "Americans."

"So!" cried the woman, her face brightening. She turned to the two listening groups. "They are not English, after all," she called gaily. "They are Americans—Americans of New York!"

There was an instant change of the social atmosphere, a buzz of eager talk. The old men and the old women drew near. Then came shy, but eager, questions. Hans, Fritz, Anna were in New York. Could Leighton give any news of them? Each had his little pathetically confident cry for news of son or daughter, and Leighton's personal acquaintance, as an American, was taken to range from Toronto to Buenos Aires.

Leighton treated them like children; laughed at them, and then described gravely in simple words the distances of the New World, the size and the turmoil of its cities.

"Your children are young and strong," he added, noting their wistful eyes; "they can stand it. But you—you old folks—are much better off here."

"And yet," said an old woman, with longing in her pale eyes, "I have stood many things."

Leighton turned to Lewis.

"All old, eh?" he repeated. "Young ones all gone. Do you remember what I said about this being the best-regulated state on earth?"

Lewis nodded.

"Well," continued Leighton, "a perfectly regulated state is a fine thing, a great thing for humanity. It has only one fault: nobody wants to live in it."

Two days later they reached Heidelberg and, on the day following, climbed the mountain to the Koenigstuhl. They stood on the top of the tower and gazed on such a sight as Lewis had never seen. Here were no endless sands and thorn-trees, no lonely reaches, no tropic glare. All was river and wooded glade, harvest and harvesters, spires above knotted groups of houses, castle, and hovel. Here and there and everywhere, still spirals of smoke hung above the abodes of men. It was like a vision of peace and plenty from the Bible.

Lewis was surprised to find that his father was not looking at the scene. Leighton was bending over such a dial as no other spot on earth could boast. Its radiating spokes of varying lengths pointed to a hundred places, almost within the range of sight—names famous in song and story, in peace and in war. Leighton read them out, name after name. He glanced at Lewis's puzzled face.

"They mean nothing to you?" he asked.

Lewis shook his head.

"So you're not quite educated, after all," said Leighton.

They descended almost at a run to the gardens behind the Schloss. As they reached them a long string of carriages drove up from the town. They were full of tourists, many of whom wore the enameled flag of the United States in their buttonholes. Some of the women carried little red, white, and blue silk flags.

Lewis saw his father wince.

"Dad," he asked, "are they Americans?"

"Yes, boy," said Leighton. "Do you remember what I told you about the evanescent spirit in art?"

Lewis nodded.

"Well," said Leighton, "a beloved flag has an evanescent spirit, too. One shouldn't finger carelessly the image one would adore. That's why I winced just now. Collectively, we Americans have never lowered the Stars and Stripes, but individually we do it pretty often." Then he threw up his head and smiled. "After all, there's a bright side even to blatant patriotism. A nation can put up with every form of devotion so long as it gets it from all."

"But, Dad," said Lewis, "I thought all American women were beautiful."

"So they are," said Leighton, with a laugh. "When you stop believing that, you stop being an American. All American women are beautiful—some outside, and the rest inside."

"Why don't you take me to the States?" asked Lewis.

Leighton turned around.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty," said Lewis.

"I'll take you," said Leighton, "when you are old enough to see the States. It takes a certain amount of philosophy nowadays to understand your country—and mine. Of all the nations in the world, we Americans see ourselves least as others see us. We have a national vanity that keeps us from studying a looking-glass. That's a paradox," said Leighton, smiling at Lewis's puzzled look. "A paradox," he continued, "is a verity the unpleasant truth of which is veiled."

"Anyway, I should like to go to the States," said Lewis.

"Just now," said Leighton, "our country is traveling the universal road of commercialism, but it's traveling fast. When it gets to the end of the road, it will be an interesting country."



CHAPTER XXV

Three years later, with the approval of Le Brux, Lewis exhibited the "Startled Woman." He did not name it. It named itself. There was no single remarkable trait in the handling of the life-size nude figure beyond its triumph as a whole—its sure impression of alarm.

Leighton came to Paris for his son's debut. When he saw the statue, he said:

"It is not great. You are not old enough for that. But it will be a success, probably a sensation. What else have you done?"

All the modeling that Lewis had accumulated in the three years of his apprenticeship was passed in review. Leighton scarcely looked at the casts. He kept his eyes on Le Brux's face and measured his changing expression.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes," said Lewis.

"Well," said Leighton, "I suggest we destroy the lot. What do you say, Le Brux?"

Le Brux raised his bushy eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, and threw out his hands.

"Eh," he grunted, "it is for the boy to say. Has he the courage? They are his offspring."

The two men stood and looked at Lewis. His eyes passed from them to his work and back again to Leighton's face.

"You are my father," he said.

"Come on," cried Leighton, without a moment's hesitation, "let us all join in the slaughter. Just remember, boy, that it's no more cruel to kill your young than to sell them into slavery."

Three days later all of Paris that counts was talking of the "Startled Woman." The name of Leighton fils was in many mouths and in almost as many printed paragraphs.

"Leighton fils!" cried Lewis. Why fils?"

"Paris has a long memory for art, my boy," said Leighton. "Before I learned that I could never reach the heights, I raised a small monument on a foot-hill. They haven't forgotten it, these critics who never die."

Lewis was assailed by dealers. They offered him prices that seemed to him fabulous. But Leighton listened calmly and said, "Wait." The longer they waited, the higher climbed the rival dealers. At last came an official envelop. "Ah," said Leighton, before Lewis had opened it, "it has come."

It was an offer from the state. It was lower than the least of the dealers' bids. "That's the prize offer, boy," said Leighton. "Take it."

They went back to London together. Leighton helped Lewis search for a studio. They examined many places, pleasant and unpleasant. Finally Lewis settled on a great, bare, loft-like room within a few minutes' walk of the flat. "This will do," he said.

"Why?" asked Leighton.

"Space," said Lewis. "Le Brux taught me that. One must have space to see big."

While they were still busy fitting up the atelier a note came to Lewis from Lady Derl. She told him to come and see her at once, to bring all his clippings on the "Startled Woman," and a photograph that would do the lady more justice than had the newspaper prints.

When Lewis entered Lady Derl's room of light, it seemed to him that he had not been away from London for a day. The room was unchanged. Lady Derl was unchanged. She did not rise. She held out her hand, and Lewis raised her fingers to his lips.

"How well you do it, Lew!" she said. "Sit down."

He sat down and showed her a photograph of his work. She looked at it long. For an instant her worldliness dropped from her. She glanced shrewdly at Lewis's face. He met her eyes frankly. Then she tossed the picture aside.

"You are a nice boy," she said lightly. "I think I'll give a little dinner for you. This time your dad won't object."

"I hope not," said Lewis, smiling. "I'm bigger than he is now."

Both laughed, and then chatted until Leighton came in to join them at tea. Lady Derl told him of the dinner. He shrugged his shoulders and asked when it was to be.

"Don't look so bored," said Lady Derl. "I'll get Old Ivory to come, if you 're coming. You two always create an atmosphere within an atmosphere where you can breathe the kind of air you like."

Leighton smiled.

"It's a funny thing," he said. "When Ivory and I meet casually, we simply nod as though we'd never shared each other's tents; but when we are both caught out in society, we fly together and hobnob like long-lost brothers. We've made three trips together. Every one of 'em was planned at some ultra dinner incrusted with hothouse flowers and hothouse women."

"Thanks," said Lady Derl.

Lewis might have been bored by that first formal dinner if he had known the difference between women grown under glass and women grown in the open. But he didn't. With the exception of Ann Leighton, mammy, and Natalie, who were not women at all so much as part and parcel of his own fiber, women were just women. He treated them all alike, and with a gallant nonchalance that astounded his two neighbors, Lady Blanche Trevoy and the Hon. Violet Materlin, accustomed as they were to find youths of his age stupidly callow or at best, in their innocence, mildly exciting. Leighton, seated at H lne's left, watched Lewis curiously.

"They've taken to him," said H lne.

"Yes," said Leighton. "Nothing wins a woman of the world so quickly as the unexpected. The unexpected adds to the ancient lure of curiosity the touch of tartness that gives life to a jaded palate. Satiated women are the most grateful for such a fillip, and once a woman's grateful, she's generous. A generous man will give a beggar a copper, but a generous woman will give away all her coppers, and throw in herself for good measure."

"When you have to try to be clever, Glen, you're a bore," remarked H lne.

"I'm not trying to be clever," said Leighton. "There's a battle going on over there, and I was merely throwing light on it."

The battle was worth watching. The two young women were as dissimilar as beauty can be. Both had all the charms of well-nurtured and well-cared-for flesh. Splendid necks and shoulders, plenty of their own hair, lovely contour of face, practice in the use of the lot, were theirs in common. But Vi was dark, still, and long of limb. Blanche was blonde, vivacious, and compact without being in the least heavy.

Vi spoke slowly. Even for an English woman she had a low voice. It was a voice of peculiar power. One always waited for it to finish. Vi knew its power. She tormented her opponents by drawling. Blanche also spoke softly, but at will she could make her words scratch like the sharp claws of a kitten.

"And how did you ever get the model to take that startled pose?" Blanche was asking Lewis.

"That's where the luck came in," said Lewis, smiling; "and the luck is what keeps the work from being great."

"What do you mean?"

"Well," said Lewis, "Le Brux says that luck often leads to success, never to greatness."

"And how did luck come in?" drawled Vi.

Lewis smiled again.

"I'll tell you," he said. "The model is an old pal of mine. One day we were bathing in the Marne,—at least I was bathing, and she was just going to,—when a farmer appeared on the scene and yelled at her. She was startled and turning to make a run for it when I shouted, 'Hold that pose, Cellette! She's a mighty well-trained model. For a second she held the pose. That was enough. She remembered it ever after.

"Does it take a lot of training to be a model?" asked Blanche. "How would I do?" She turned her bare shoulders frankly to him.

Lewis glanced at her. "Yours is not a beauty that can be held in stone," he said. "You are too respectable for a bacchante, too vivacious for anything else." He turned to Vi. "You would do better," he said as though she too had asked.

Vi said nothing, but her large, dark eyes suddenly looked away and beyond the room. A flush rose slowly into her smooth, dusky cheek. Blanche bit her under lip.

"Vi has won out," said H lne to Leighton.



CHAPTER XXVI

Natalie and her mother were sitting on the west veranda of Consolation Cottage at the evening hour. Just within the open door of the dining-room mammy swayed to and fro in a vast rocking-chair that looked too big for her.

The years had not dealt kindly with the three. Years in the tropics never do deal kindly with women. Mammy had grown old and thin. Her clothes, frayed, but clean, hung loosely upon her. Her hair was turning gray. She wore steel-rimmed glasses. Mrs. Leighton's face, while it had not returned to the apathy of the years of sorrow at Nadir, was still deeply lined and of the color and texture of old parchment. The blue of her eyes had paled and paled until light seemed to have almost gone from them. To Natalie had come age with youth. She gave the impression of a freshly cut flower suddenly wilted by the sun.

In Mrs. Leighton's lap lay two letters. One had brought the news that Natalie had inherited from a Northern Leighton aunt an old property on a New England hillside. The other contained the third offer from a development company that had long coveted the grounds about Consolation Cottage.