ther he didn't think that a way it would be
well to get rid of. Paul grinned and said he guessed so. When he was told
that he could go, he bowed gracefully and went out. His bow was like a
repetition of the scandalous red carnation.

His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feeling
of them all when he declared there was something about the boy which
none of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile of
his comes altogether from insolence; there's something sort of haunted
about it. The boy is not strong, for one thing. There is something wrong
about the fellow."

The drawing master had come to realize that, in looking at Paul, one saw
only his white teeth and the forced animation of his eyes. One warm
afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing-board, and his master
had noted with amazement what a white, blue-veined face it was; drawn and
wrinkled like an old man's about the eyes, the lips twitching even in his
sleep.

His teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy; humiliated to
have felt so vindictive toward a mere boy, to have uttered this feeling
in cutting terms, and to have set each other on, as it were, in the
grewsome game of intemperate reproach. One of them remembered having seen
a miserable street cat set at bay by a ring of tormentors.

As for Paul, he ran down the hill whistling the Soldiers' Chorus from
_Faust_, looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of
his teachers were not there to witness his lightheartedness. As it was
now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at
Carnegie Hall, he decided that he would not go home to supper.

When he reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open. It was
chilly outside, and he decided to go up into the picture gallery--always
deserted at this hour--where there were some of Raffelli's gay studies of
Paris streets and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that always
exhilarated him. He was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the
old guard, who sat in the corner, a newspaper on his knee, a black patch
over one eye and the other closed. Paul possessed himself of the place
and walked confidently up and down, whistling under his breath. After a
while he sat down before a blue Rico and lost himself. When he bethought
him to look at his watch, it was after seven o'clock, and he rose with a
start and ran downstairs, making a face at Augustus Caesar, peering o