bygone times; then he
would spend the rest of his day revisiting old haunts--often sitting
on the edge of the stone fountain in the rond-point of the Avenue du
Prince Imperial, or de l'Imperatrice, or whatever it was--to gaze
comfortably at the outside of the old school, which was now a
pensionnat de demoiselles: soon to be pulled down and make room for
a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts
of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and
realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a
strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no
name. Je connais ca! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the haunts
of my childhood.

When the joy of this faded, as it always must when indulged in too
freely, he amused himself by sitting in his bedroom and painting
Leah's portrait, enlarged and in oils; partly from the very vivid
image he had preserved of her in his mind, partly from the stolen
photograph. At first he got it very like; then he lost all the
likeness and could not recover it; and he worked and worked till he
got stupid over it, and his mental image faded quite away.

But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a
powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into
his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of
every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him
realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some
day--and what its owner might become.

And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation--a
blast--a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and _so_
beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and
Barty was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh,
poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner--whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly
unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill
man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! What a hellish
after-math!

Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about
becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go
and consult, although there were many people he might have
discovered whom he had known: old school-fellows, and friends of the
Archibald Rohans--who would have been only too glad.

So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at
cheap suburban restaurants, taking long