was working as a common
journeyman in the studio of Barye, and early in the morning, late at
night, and on Sundays, worked for himself eagerly, hungrily, like the
slave of old in Albany, and yet, with what a difference! He had no one
but himself to consider, but had the interest of the atelier where he
studied, even as he sold his skill that it might be lost in the
creations of more advanced artists, and there, during the days of his
apprenticeship, his visions came to him, and what conceptions he then
had he tried to work out and to mature, when he had the chance, in his
own room.

Dearborn, who never left the studio except to eat, smoked and worked and
read all day.

The two men were sufficiently of a size to wear each other's clothes.
They had thought it out carefully and had preserved from the holocaust,
of the different financial crises, one complete out-of-door outfit, from
hat to boots--and those boots!

It was "deplorable" the bookseller, whose little shelf of books lay on
the stone wall of the quay, said, it was "deplorable" that such a fine
pair of men should be lame and in exactly the same fashion. Fairfax
could not walk at all in the other man's shoes, so his normal friend
made the sacrifice and the proper shoes were pawned, and Robert Dearborn
and Tony Fairfax had shared alternately the big boot and the small one,
the light and the heavy step. And they were directed by such different
individuals, the boots went through Paris in such diverse ways!

"By Jove!" exclaimed Dearborn, examining the boots carefully, "it isn't
fair. You're walking these boots of ours to death! Who the deuce will
take them out in his bare feet to be repaired?"

They were just as absurdly poor as this. Nobody whose soul is not
absorbed in art can ever understand what it is to be so stupidly poor.

Dearborn, when he could be forced out of the house, put on the shoes
with reluctance; he was greatly annoyed by the clatter of the big boot.
The shoes didn't fit him in the least. He would shuffle into the nearest
cafe, if his credit was good enough to permit it, and there, under the
small table on which he wrote page after page over his cigarette and cup
of black coffee, he hid the big awkward shoe for as long as he could
endure exile from the studio. Then he came home.

Fairfax swung the boot down the stairs, he swung it along the pavements
of Paris! What distance he took it! It seemed to have a wing at the
heel. It tramped through