e trouble to
conceal the fact. The very idea of a fixed income is as distasteful to
him as the possibility of possessing it is distant and visionary. There
is always money in abundance, money for Faustina's horses and carriages,
money for Gouache's select dinners, money for the expensive fancies of
both. The paint pot is the mine, the brush is the miner's pick, and the
vein has never failed, nor the hand trembled in working it. A golden
youth, a golden river flowing softly to the red gold sunset of the
end--that is life as it seems to Anastase and Faustina.

On the morning which opens this chronicle, Anastase was standing before
his canvas, palette and brushes in hand, considering the nature of the
human face in general and of young Orsino's face in particular.

"I have known your father and mother for centuries," observed the
painter with a fine disregard of human limitations. "Your father is the
brown type of a dark man, and your mother is the olive type of a dark
woman. They are no more alike than a Red Indian and an Arab, but you are
like both. Are you brown or are you olive, my friend? That is the
question. I would like to see you angry, or in love, or losing at play.
Those things bring out the real complexion."

Orsino laughed and showed a remarkably solid set of teeth. But he did
not find anything to say.

"I would like to know the truth about your complexion," said Anastase,
meditatively.

"I have no particular reason for being angry," answered Orsino, "and I
am not in love--"

"At your age! Is it possible!"

"Quite. But I will play cards with you if you like," concluded the young
man.

"No," returned the other. "It would be of no use. You would win, and if
you happened to win much, I should be in a diabolical scrape. But I wish
you would fall in love. You should see how I would handle the green
shadows under your eyes."

"It is rather short notice."

"The shorter the better. I used to think that the only real happiness in
life lay in getting into trouble, and the only real interest in getting
out."

"And have you changed your mind?"

"I? No. My mind has changed me. It is astonishing how a man may love his
wife under favourable circumstances."

Anastase laid down his brushes and lit a cigarette. Reubens would have
sipped a few drops of Rhenish from a Venetian glass. Teniers would have
lit a clay pipe. Duerer would perhaps have swallowed a pint of Nueremberg
beer, and Greuse or Mignard would hav