the quarters of the city from the quays to
fine old streets, to forgotten alleys, to the Cite on the Ile, then
again by the fresh gay avenues of the Champs Elysees to the Bois, again
to the quays, and, when well up the river, he would sometimes board the
boat and come back down the Seine, dreaming, musing, creating, and,
floating home, would take the big boot upstairs.

"By Jove, Tony!" Dearborn remarked, examining the boots closely, "it's
not fair! One of us will have to _drive_ if you don't let up, old man!"

Dearborn, when he did not haunt his cafe and when inspiration failed,
would haunt the Bibliotheque Nationale, and amongst the "Rats de
litterature"--savant, actor, poet, amongst the cold and weary who lounge
in the chairs of the library to dream, to get warm, and to imagine real
firesides with one's own books and one's own walls around them--Dearborn
would sit for hours poring over old manuscripts from which he had hoped
to extract inspiration, listening, as do his sort, for "the voices."

CHAPTER VII

It was a year of privation, but there were moments spent on the
threshold of Paradise.

His materials, barrels of clay and plaster, were costly. Dearborn said
that he thanked God he had a "metier" requiring no further expenditure
than a pot of ink and a lot of paper.

"The ideas," he told Fairfax, "are expensive, and I think, old man, that
I shall have to _buy_ some. I find that they will not come unless I
invite them to dinner!"

Neither of the young men had made a hearty meal for an unconsciously
long time. The weather grew colder and they lived as they could on
Fairfax's day wage.

At this time, when during the hours of his freedom he was housed with
his companion, Fairfax was overwhelmed by the rush of his ideas and his
desire to create. He would not let himself long for solitude, for he was
devoted to his friend and grateful for his companionship and affection,
but a certain piece of work had haunted him since his first Sunday
afternoon at the Louvre, and he was eager to finish the statue he had
begun and to send it to the Salon.

The Visions no longer eluded him--ever present, sometimes they
overpowered him by their obsession. They flattered the young man,
seeming to embrace him, called to him, uplifted him until heights
levelled before his eyes and became roads upon which he walked lightly,
and his pride in his own power grew. Antony forgot to be humble. He was
his own master--he had scor