ve kind, of a youthful kind. There would be dancing
and singing, and sometimes Fairfax would take part in it all and sing
with them in his pleasant baritone and smile upon them; but he liked it
best when they were alone, and Dearborn did too; and in Fairfax's
silence and the other man's absorption they nevertheless daily grew
firmer and faster friends.

"Bob," Fairfax said--and as he spoke he abruptly interrupted Dearborn in
the most vital scene of his act--"I can't take a penny from her for this
portrait."

Dearborn dropped his manuscript on his knee. His expression was that of
a slightly hurt egotism, for he had sat up all night working over this
scene and burned all day to read it to Fairfax.

"Well, anyhow, don't ask me to cough up the two hundred and fifty
francs. That's all I ask," he said a little curtly.

"I shall give her some study, one of these other statuettes," Fairfax
said moodily, "some kind of return for the five hundred francs."

"She wouldn't care for anything I have got, would she, Tony?" Dearborn
put his hands in the ample pockets and displayed his voluminous wrapper.
"I'm crazy about this dressing-gown," he said affectionately. "It has
warmed and sheltered my best thoughts. It has wrapped around and
comforted my fainting heart. It's hatched ideas for me; it's been a
plaidie to the angry airs. Tony, she wouldn't take the dressing-gown,
would she?"

"Rot!" exclaimed his friend fiercely. "Don't be an ass. Don't you see
how I feel?"

"No, I don't," said the other simply. "I am not a mind reader. I'm an
imaginator. I can make up a lot of stuff about your feeling. I daresay I
do invent. You will see this in my play some day. You are really an
inspiration, old man, but as for having an accurate idea of your
feelings...! For three weeks, ever since that banknote fluttered amongst
the crumbs of our table, you have scarcely said a word to me, not a
whole paragraph." He shook his finger emphatically. "If I were not
absorbed myself, no doubt I should be beastly, diabolically lonesome."

Antony seemed entirely unmoved by this picture. "I think I shall go to
Rome, Bob," he began, then cried: "No, I mean to St. Petersburg."

"It will be less expensive," Dearborn suggested dryly, "and considerably
less travel, not to go to the Bois de Boulogne."

"I shall finish this portrait this week," Fairfax went on. "Now I can't
scrape it out and begin again. I have done it twice. It would be
desecration, for it's