arborn's hand, "I bless you
for saying that!"

Dearborn regarded him quietly. "Do you think I care for money?" he said
simply. "I thought you knew me better than that."

Fairfax exclaimed, "Oh, I don't know what I know or think; I am in a bad
dream."

Dearborn laid the notes down on the sofa. "It is for you and me and
Nora, the bunch, just as long as it lasts."

Between Dearborn and himself, since Antony's engagement, there had been
a distinct reserve.

Antony lit a cigarette and Dearborn lighted his from Antony's. The two
friends settled themselves comfortably. It was the close of the day.
Without, as usual, rolled the sea of the Paris streets, going to, going
with the river's tide, and going away from it; the impersonal noise
always made for them an accompaniment not disagreeable. The last light
of the spring day fell on Fairfax's uncovered work, on the damp clay
with the fresh marks of his instruments. He sat in his corduroys, a red
scarf at his throat, a beautiful manly figure half curled up on the
divan. The last of the day's light fell too on Dearborn's reddish hair,
on his fine intelligent face. Fairfax said--

"Now tell me everything, Bob, from the beginning, from the window as you
looked over the chimney-pots with the hyacinthine smoke curling up in
the air--tell me everything, to the last word the manager said."

"Hark!" exclaimed Dearborn, lifting his hand. "Nora is coming. I want
to tell it to her as well. No one can tell twice alike the story of his
first success--the first agony of first success." He caught his breath
and struck Fairfax a friendly blow on his chest. "It will be a success,
thank God! There is Nora," and he crossed the studio to let Nora Scarlet
in.

CHAPTER XX

The third day he went up to see her and found her in the garden, a
basket on her arm, cutting flowers. She wore a garden hat covered with
roses and carried a pair of gilded shears with which to snip her
flowers. As Antony came down the steps of the house she dropped the
scissors into the basket with her garden gloves. She lifted her cheek to
him.

"You may kiss me, dear," she said; "no one will see us but the flowers
and the birds."

Antony bent to kiss her. It seemed to him as though his arms were full
of flowers.

"If you had not come to-day, I should have gone to you. You look well,
Tony," she said. "I don't believe you have been ill at all."

"My work, Mary."

She took his arm and started towards the h