During the journey back to Paris, Eugene and Starwick said little. The two young men were the sole occupants of the compartment, they sat facing each other, looking out through the windows with gloomy eyes. The grey light of the short winter’s day was fading rapidly: when they entered Paris dusk had come; as the train rattled over the switchpoints in the yard-approaches to the Gare St. Lazare, they could see lights and life and sometimes faces in the windows of the high, faded buildings near the tracks. Through one window, in a moment’s glimpse, Eugene saw a room with a round table with a dark cloth upon it, and with the light of a shaded chandelier falling on it, and a dark-haired boy of ten or twelve leaning on the table, reading a book, with his face propped in his hands, and a woman moving busily about the table laying it with plates and knives and forks. And as the train slackened speed, he saw, high up in the topmost floor of an old house that rose straight up from the tracks, a woman come to the window, look for a moment at a canary-bird cage which was hanging in the window, reach up and take it from its hook. She had the rough, blowsy, and somewhat old-fashioned look of a demi-monde of the Renoir period; and yet she was like someone he had known all his life.

They passed long strings of silent, darkened railway compartments, and as they neared the station, several suburban trains steamed past them, loaded with people going home. Some of the trains were the queer little double-deckers that one sees in France: Eugene felt like laughing every time he saw them and yet, with their loads of Frenchmen going home, they too were like something he had always known. As the train came into the station, and slowed down to its halt, he could see a boat-train ready for departure on another track. Sleek as a panther, groomed, opulent, ready, purring softly as a cat, the train waited there like a luxurious projectile, evoking perfectly, and at once, the whole structure of the world of power and wealth and pleasure that had created it. Beyond it one saw the whole universe of pleasure — a world of great hotels and famed resorts, the thrilling structure of the huge, white-breasted liners, and the slanting race and drive of their terrific stacks. One saw behind it the dark coast of France, the flash of beacons, the grey, fortressed harbour walls, the bracelet of their hard, spare lights, and beyond, beyond, one saw the infinite beat and swell of stormy seas, the huge nocturnal slant and blaze of liners racing through immensity, and for ever beyond, beyond, one saw the faint, pale coasts of morning and America, and then the spires and ramparts of the enfabled isle, the legendary and aerial smoke, the stone and steel, of the terrific city.

Now their own train had come to a full stop, and he and Starwick were walking up the quay among the buzzing crowd of people.

Starwick turned and, flushing painfully, said in a constrained and mannered tone:

“Look! Shall I being seeing you again?”

Eugene answered curtly: “I don’t know. If you want to find me, I suppose I shall be at the same place, for a time.”

“And after that? — Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” he answered brusquely again. “I haven’t thought about it yet. I’ve got to wait until I get money to go away on.”

The flush in Starwick’s ruddy face deepened perceptibly, and, after another pause, and with obvious embarrassment, he continued as before:

“Look! Where are you going now?”

“I don’t know, Francis,” he said curtly. “To the hotel, I suppose, to leave my suitcase and see if they’ve still got a room for me. If I don’t see you again, I’ll say good-bye to you now.”

Starwick’s embarrassment had become painful to watch; he did not speak for another moment, then said:

“Look! Do you mind if I come along with you?”

He did mind; he wanted to be alone; to get away as soon as he could from Starwick’s presence and all the hateful memories it evoked, but he said shortly:

“You can come along if you like, of course, but I see no reason why you should. If you’re going to the studio we can take a taxi and you can drop me at the hotel. But if you’re meeting somebody over on this side later on, why don’t you wait over here for him?”

Starwick’s face was flaming with shame and humiliation; he seemed to have difficulty in pronouncing his words and when he finally turned to speak, the other youth was shocked to see in his eyes a kind of frantic, naked desperation.

“Then, look!” he said, and moistened his dry lips. “Could you let me have some — some money, please?”

Something strangely like terror and entreaty looked out of his eyes:

“I’ve GOT to have it,” he said desperately.

“How much do you want?”

Starwick was silent, and then muttered:

“I could get along with 500 francs.”

The other calculated swiftly: the sum amounted at the time to about thirty dollars. It was almost half his total remaining funds but — one look at the desperate humiliation and entreaty of Starwick’s face, and a surge of savage, vindictive joy swept through him — it would be worth it.

“All right,” he nodded briefly, and started to walk forward again.

“You come with me while I leave this stuff at the hotel and later on we’ll see if we can’t get these cheques cashed.”

Starwick consented eagerly. From that time on, Eugene played with him as a cat plays with a mouse. They got a taxi and were driven across the Seine to his little hotel, he left Starwick below while he went upstairs with his valise, promising to “be down in a minute, after I’ve washed up a bit,” and took a full and lesiurely three-quarters of an hour. When he got downstairs, Starwick’s restless manner had increased perceptibly: he was pacing up and down, smoking one cigarette after another. In the same leisurely and maddening manner they left the hotel. Starwick asked where they were going: Eugene replied cheerfully that they were going to dinner at a modest little restaurant across the Seine. By the time they had walked across the bridge, and through the enormous arches of the Louvre, Starwick was gnawing his lips with chagrin. In the restaurant Eugene ordered dinner and a bottle of wine; Starwick refused to eat, Eugene expressed regret and pursued his meal deliberately. By the time he had finished, and was cracking nuts, Starwick was almost frantic. He demanded impatiently to know where they were going, and the other answered chidingly:

“Now, Frank, what’s the hurry? You’ve got the whole night ahead of you: there’s no rush at all. . . . Besides, why not stay here a while? It’s a good place. Don’t you think so? I discovered it all by myself!”

Starwick looked about him, and said:

“Yes, the place is all right, I suppose, the food looks good — it really does, you know — but GOD!” he snarled bitterly, “how dull! how dull!”

“DULL?” Eugene said chidingly, and with an air of fine astonishment. “Frank, Frank, such language — and from YOU! Is this the poet and the artist, the man of feeling and of understanding, the lover of humanity? Is this GRAND, is this FINE, is this SWELL?” he jeered. “Is this the lover of the French — the man who’s more at home here than he is at home? Why, Frank, this is unworthy of you: I thought that every breath you drew was saturated with the love of France. I thought that every pulse-beat of your artist’s soul beat in sympathy with the people of this noble country. I thought that you would love this place — find it SIMPLY SWELL,” he sneered, “and VERY grand and MOST amusing — and here you turn your nose up at the people and call them dull — as if they were a lot of damned Americans! DULL! How can they be DULL, Frank? Don’t you see they’re FRENCH? . . . Now this boy here, for example,” he pointed to a bus-boy of eighteen years who was noisily busy piling dishes from a table on to a tray. —“Isn’t he a SWEET person, Frank?” he went on with an evil, jeering mimicry —“and there’s something VERY grand and ENORMOUSLY moving about the way he piles those dishes on a tray,” he continued with a deliberate parody of Starwick’s mannered accent. “— I MEAN, the whole thing’s there — it really is, you know — it’s like that painting by Cimabue in the Louvre that we both like so much — you know the one of the Madonna with the little madonnas all around her. — I mean the way he uses his hands — Look!” he crooned rapturously as the bus-boy took a thick, blunt finger and vigorously wiped his rheumy nose with it. “— Now where, WHERE, Frank,” he said ecstatically, “could you find anything like that in America? I MEAN, the GRACE, the DIGNITY, the complete unselfconsciousness with which that boy just wiped his nose across his finger — or his finger across his nose — Hah! hah! hah! — I get all confused, Frank — REALLY! — the movement is so beautiful and fluid — it’s hard to say just which is which — which does the WIPING— nose or finger — I mean, the whole thing’s QUITE incredible — and MOST astonishing — the way it comes back on itself: it’s like a FUGUE, you know,” and looking at the other earnestly, he said deeply: “You see what I mean, don’t you?”

Starwick’s face had flamed crimson during the course of this jeering parody: he returned the other’s look with hard eyes, and said with cold succinctness:

“Quite! . . . If you don’t mind, could we go along now and,”— his flush deepened and he concluded with painful difficulty, “ . . . and . . . and do what you said you would?”

“But of COURSE!” the other cried, with another parody of Starwick’s tone and manner. “At once! Immediately! TOUT DE SUITE! . . . as we say over here! . . . Now, THERE you are!” he said enthusiastically. “THERE you are, Frank! . . . TOUT DE SUITE!” he murmured rapturously. “TOUT DE SUITE! . . . Not ‘at once!’ Not ‘right away!’ Not ‘immediately!’ But TOUT DE SUITE! . . . Ah, Frank, how different from our own coarse tongue! Quel charme! Quelle musique! Quelle originalité! . . . I MEAN, the whole thing’s there! . . . It really is, you know!”

“Quite!” said Starwick as before, and looked at him with hard, embittered eyes. “Could we go now?”

“Mais oui, mais oui, mon ami! . . . But first, I want you to meet yon noble youth who wipes his nose with such a simple unaffected dignity, and is, withal, so FRENCH about it! . . . I know him well, we artists have the common touch, n’est-ce pas? Many a time and oft have we talked together. . . . Why, Frank, you’re going to love him like a brother . . . the whole, great heart of France is beating underneath that waiter’s jacket . . . and, ah! such grace, such flashing rapier-work of Gallic wit, such quick intelligence and humour. . . . Ecoutez, gar?on!” he called; the boy turned, startled, and then, seeing the young men, his thick lips slowly wreathed themselves in a smile of amiable stupidity. He came towards them smiling eagerly, a clumsy boy of eighteen years with the thick features, the dry, thick lips, the blunted, meaty hands and encrusted nails of the peasant. It was a face of slow, wondering intelligence, thick-witted, unperceptive, flushed with strong, dark colour, full of patient earnestness, and animal good-nature.

“Bonsoir, monsieur,” he said, as he came up. “Vous désirez quelque chose?” And he grinned at them slowly, with a puzzled, trustful stare.

“But yes, my boy! . . . I have been telling my friend about you, and he wants to meet you. He is, like me, an American . . . but a true friend of France. And so I told him how you loved America!”

“But yes, but yes!” the boy cried earnestly, clutching eagerly at the suggestion. “La France and l’Amérique are of the true friends, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?”

“You have reason! It’s as you say!”

“Vashingtawn!” the boy cried suddenly, with a burst of happy inspiration.

“But yes! But yes! . . . Lafayette!” the other yelled enthusiastically.

“Pair-SHING!” the boy cried rapturously. “La France et l’Amérique!” he passionately proclaimed, and he turned slowly to Starwick, joined his thick, blunt fingers together, and thrusting them under Starwick’s nose, nodded his thick head vigorously and cried: “C’est comme ?a! . . . La France et l’Amérique!”— he shook his thick joined fingers vigorously under Starwick’s nose again, and said: “Mais oui! Mais oui! . . . C’est toujours comme ?a!”

“Oh, my God!” groaned Starwick, turning away, “how dull! How utterly, UNSPEAKABLY dreary!”

“Monsieur?” the boy spoke inquiringly, and turned blunt, puzzled features at Starwick’s dejected back.

Starwick’s only answer was another groan: flinging a limp arm over the back of his chair, he slumped in an attitude of exhausted weariness. The boy turned a patient, troubled face to the other youth, who said, in an explanatory way:

“He is profoundly moved. . . . What you have said has touched him deeply!”

“Ah-h!” the boy cried, with an air of sudden, happy enlightenment, and thus inspired, began with renewed ardour, and many a vigorous wag of his thick and earnest beak, to proclaim:

“Mais c’est vrai! C’est comme je dis! . . . La France et l&rsquo............