t worth doing unless it is done well, but I won't come to any final
decision for another year or two. Now it is past ten o'clock, and I must
be going."

"When will you come? To-morrow?"

"I will come at three o'clock. Have your things on by that time, and we
will go for a ramble."

Rene Caillard came into Cuthbert's room at nine o'clock the next
morning.

"I came round yesterday evening, Cuthbert, and heard from the concierge
that you had arrived and had gone out again. As she said you had driven
off in a fiacre, it was evidently of no use waiting. I thought I would
come down and catch you the first thing this morning. You look well and
strong again, your native air evidently suits you."

"I feel quite well again, though not quite so strong. So things have
turned out just as I anticipated, and the Reds are the masters of
Paris."

Rene shrugged his shoulders. "It is disgusting," he said. "It does not
trouble us much, we have nothing to lose but our heads, and as these
scoundrels would gain nothing by cutting them off, I suppose we shall be
allowed to go our own way."

"Is the studio open again?"

"Oh, yes, and we are all hard at work, that is to say, the few that
remain of us. Goude has been fidgeting for you to come back. He has
asked several times whether I have news of you, and if I was sure you
had not left Paris forever. I know he will be delighted when I tell him
that you have returned; still more so if you take the news yourself."

"I suppose Minette has resumed her duties as model?"

"Not she," Rene said scornfully, "she is one of the priestesses of the
Commune. She rides about on horseback with a red flag and sash.
Sometimes she goes at the head of a battalion, sometimes she rides about
with the leaders. She is in earnest but she is in earnest theatrically,
and that fool, Dampierre, is as bad as she is."

"What! Has he joined the Commune?".

"Joined, do you say? Why, he is one of its leaders. He plays the part of
La Fayette, in the drama, harangues the National Guards, assures them of
the sympathy of America, calls upon them to defend the freedom they have
won by their lives and to crush back their oppressors, as his countrymen
crushed their British tyrants. Of course it is all Minette's doing; he
is as mad as she is. I can assure you that he is quite a popular hero
among the Reds, and they would have appointed him a general if he had
chosen to accept it, but he said that he considered himself as