r clothes, her great expenditures on herself,
made him open his blue eyes. Once he held her exquisitely shod foot in
his hand, admiring its beauty and its slenderness. On the polished
leather was the sparkle of her paste buckles; he admired the ephemeral
web of her silk stocking, and was ashamed that the thought should cross
his mind as to what this lovely foot represented of extravagance. But he
had been with her when she bought the buckles on the Rue de la Paix; he
knew the price they cost. Was the money making him sordid--hypercritical,
unkind?

Life for six months whirled round him. Mary Faversham dazzled and
bewitched him, charmed and flattered him. Their engagement had not been
made public. He ceased to work; he was at her beck and call; he went
with her everywhere. At her house, in her box at the opera, he met all
Paris. She was hardly ever alone with him; he made one of a group.
Nevertheless, they were talked about. Several orders for busts were the
outcome of his meeting fashionable Paris; but he did not work. Toward
March he received word from America that his bas-relief under the name
of Thomas Rainsford had won the ten thousand dollar prize. He felt like
a prince. For some singular reason he told no one, not even Dearborn. In
writing to him the committee had told him that according to the
contracts the money would not be forthcoming until July. He had gone
through so many bitter disappointments in his life that he did not want
in the minds of his friends to anticipate this payment and be
disappointed anew.

Among his fellow-workers in the Barye studio was the son of a
millionaire pork-packer from Chicago. The young man took a tremendous
liking to Antony. With a certain perspicacity, the rich young fellow
divined much of his new friend's needs. He came to the studio, to their
different reunions, and chummed heartily with Dearborn and Fairfax.
Peterson was singularly lacking in talent and tremendously
over-furnished with heart. One day, as they worked side by side in the
studio of the big man, Peterson watched Antony's handling of a tiger's
head.

"By Jove!" cried the Chicagoan, "you are simply great--you are simply
great! I wonder if you would be furious with me if I said something to
you that is on my mind?"

The something on the simple young man's mind was that he wanted to lend
Fairfax a sum of money, to be paid back when the sculptor saw fit. After
a moment's hesitation Antony accepted the loan, maki