ender his youthful
audacity ridiculous.

He arrived in Paris on a Wednesday evening, and took a room in a _maison
meublee_ of the Rue de Seze. Every inexperienced traveller in Paris has
a friend who knows a lodging in Paris which he alleges is better and
cheaper than any other lodging--and which is not. The house in the Rue
de Seze was the economical paradise of Buckingham Smith, whom George had
encountered again at the Buckingham Smith exhibition. Buckingham Smith,
with over half his pictures bearing the red seal that indicates 'Sold,'
felt justified in posing to the younger George as a cosmopolitan
expert--especially as his opinions on modern French art were changing.
George spent three solitary and dejected days in Paris, affecting an
interest in museums and architecture and French opera, and committing
follies. Near the end of the third day, a Saturday, he suddenly sent a
threepenny express note to Lois Ingram. He would have telephoned had he
dared to use the French telephone. On Sunday morning, an aproned valet
having informed him that Monsieur was demanded at the telephone, he had
to use the telephone. Lois told him that he must come to lunch, and that
afterwards he would be escorted to the races. Dejection was instantly
transformed into a gay excitation. Proud of having spoken through a
French telephone, he began to conceive romantically the interior of a
Paris home--he had seen naught but a studio or so with Mr. Enwright--and
to thrill at the prospect of Sunday races. Not merely had he never seen
a horse-race on a Sunday--he had never seen a horse-race at all. He
perhaps was conscious of a genuine interest in Lois and her environment,
but what most satisfied and flattered him, after his loneliness, was the
bare fact of possessing social relations in Paris at all.

The Ingram home was up four flights of naked oaken stairs, fairly swept,
in a plain, flat-fronted house. The door of the home was opened by a
dark, untidy, dishevelled, uncapped, fat girl, with a full apron,
dazzling white and rectangularly creased, that had obviously just been
taken out of a drawer. Familiarly and amicably smiling, she led him into
a small, modest drawing-room where were Lois and her father and mother.
Lois was enigmatic and taciturn. Mr. and Mrs. Ingram were ingenuous,
loquacious, and at ease. Both of them had twinkling eyes. Mrs. Ingram
was rather stout and grey and small, and wore a quiet, inexpensive blue
dress, embroidered at th