d lightly.

'Your work will be all the better,' said Geraldine with a firm accent.

And then it seemed to be borne in upon him that womanish whims needed
delicate handling. And why not yield this once? It would please her. And
he could have been firm had he chosen.

Hence it was arranged.

'I'm only going to please you,' he said to her when he was mournfully
seeing her off at St. Pancras the next morning.

'Yes, I know,' she answered, 'and it's sweet of you. But you want
someone to make you move, dearest.'

'Oh, do I?' he thought; 'do I?'

His mother and Aunt Annie were politely surprised at the excursion. But
they succeeded in conveying to him that they had decided to be prepared
for anything now.

CHAPTER XXIV

COSETTE

Tom and Henry put up at the Grand Hotel, Paris. The idea was Tom's. He
decried the hotel, its clients and its reputation, but he said that it
had one advantage: when you were at the Grand Hotel you knew where you
were. Tom, it appeared, had a studio and bedroom up in Montmartre. He
postponed visiting this abode, however, until the morrow, partly because
it would not be prepared for him, and partly in order to give Henry the
full advantage of his society. They sat on the terrace of the Cafe de la
Paix, after a very late dinner, and drank bock, and watched the
nocturnal life of the boulevard, and talked. Henry gathered--not from
any direct statement, but by inference--that Tom must have acquired a
position in the art world of Paris. Tom mentioned the Salon as if the
Salon were his pocket, and stated casually that there was work of his in
the Luxembourg. Strange that the cosmopolitan quality of Tom's
reputation--if, in comparison with Henry's, it might be called a
reputation at all--roused the author's envy! He, too, wished to be
famous in France, and to be at home in two capitals. Tom retired at what
he considered an early hour--namely, midnight--the oceanic part of the
journey having saddened him. Before they separated he borrowed a
sovereign from Henry, and this simple monetary transaction had the
singular effect of reducing Henry's envy.

The next morning Henry wished to begin a systematic course of the
monuments of Paris and the artistic genius of the French nation. But Tom
would not get up. At eleven o'clock Henry, armed with a map and the
English talent for exploration, set forth alone to grasp the general
outlines of the city, and came back successful at half-past one. At
ha