nd a smart painter, or take her punishment.

When he went home, Eden's room was dark; she was dining out somewhere. He
threw his things into a hold-all he had carried about the world with him,
strapped up some colours and canvases, and ran downstairs.

VII

Five days later Hedger was a restless passenger on a dirty, crowded
Sunday train, coming back to town. Of course he saw now how unreasonable
he had been in expecting a Huntington girl to know anything about
pictures; here was a whole continent full of people who knew nothing
about pictures and he didn't hold it against them. What had such things
to do with him and Eden Bower? When he lay out on the dunes, watching the
moon come up out of the sea, it had seemed to him that there was no
wonder in the world like the wonder of Eden Bower. He was going back to
her because she was older than art, because she was the most overwhelming
thing that had ever come into his life.

He had written her yesterday, begging her to be at home this evening,
telling her that he was contrite, and wretched enough.

Now that he was on his way to her, his stronger feeling unaccountably
changed to a mood that was playful and tender. He wanted to share
everything with her, even the most trivial things. He wanted to tell her
about the people on the train, coming back tired from their holiday with
bunches of wilted flowers and dirty daisies; to tell her that the
fish-man, to whom she had often sent him for lobsters, was among the
passengers, disguised in a silk shirt and a spotted tie, and how his wife
looked exactly like a fish, even to her eyes, on which cataracts were
forming. He could tell her, too, that he hadn't as much as unstrapped his
canvases,--that ought to convince her.

In those days passengers from Long Island came into New York by ferry.
Hedger had to be quick about getting his dog out of the express car in
order to catch the first boat. The East River, and the bridges, and the
city to the west, were burning in the conflagration of the sunset; there
was that great home-coming reach of evening in the air.

The car changes from Thirty-fourth Street were too many and too
perplexing; for the first time in his life Hedger took a hansom cab for
Washington Square. Caesar sat bolt upright on the worn leather cushion
beside him, and they jogged off, looking down on the rest of the world.

It was twilight when they drove down lower Fifth Avenue into the Square,
and through the Arch