In his little hotel that night he lighted a candle in a tall nickel candlestick, and, when he was ready for bed, he peered into his mirror at his own face, which he took pains to consider thoughtfully. Like a friend's it looked back at him, the marks of Life deep upon it.

At two o'clock he was in a heavy sleep when he was roused by the turning of the handle of his door. Some one had come into the room and Antony, bolt upright, heard the door drawn and the key turned. Then something slipped and fell with a thud. He lit his candle, shielded it, and to his amazement saw sitting on the floor, his big form taking up half the little room, a young fellow in full evening dress, an opera hat on the back of his head.

"Don't squeal," said the visitor gently with a hiccough; "I see I'm too late or too early, or shomething or other."

He was evidently a gentleman out of his room and evidently drunk. Antony laughed and got half-way out of bed.

"You're in the wrong room, that's clear, and how are you going to get out of it? Can you get up with a lift?"

"Look here"—the young man who was an American and who would have been agreeable-looking if he had not been drunk and hebetated, sat back and leaned comfortably against the door—"roomsh all right, good roomsh, just like mine; don't mind me, old man, go back to bed."

Antony came over and tried to pull him up, but the stranger was immense, as big as himself, and determined and happy. He had made up his mind to pass his night on the floor.

Antony rang his bell in vain, then sighed, himself overcome with sleep. To the young man who barricaded the door, and who was already beginning to drowse, he said pleasantly—

"Give us your hat, anyway, and take off your coat."

"Now you go back to bed, sir," ordered the other with solemn dignity, "go back to bed, don't mind me. I'm nothing but a little mountain flower," he quoted pathetically. His head fell over, his big body followed it.

Antony took one of his pillows, put it under the fellow's head, and turned in himself, amused by his singularly companioned night.

"What the deuce!" he heard the next morning from a voice not unpleasant, although markedly Western. And he opened his eyes to see bending over him a ruffled, untidy, pasty-looking individual whom he remembered to have last seen sprawling on the floor.

"Say, are you in my bed or am I only out of my own?" asked the young man.

Antony told him.

"George!" exclaimed the other, sitting down on the bed and taking his head in his hands, "I was screwed all right, and I fell like a barrel in the Falls of Niagara. I'm ever so much obliged to you for not kicking up a row here. My room is next or opposite or somewhere, I guess—that is, if I'm in the Universe."

Antony said that he was.

"I feel," said the young man, "as though its revolutions had accelerated."

"There's water over there," said Antony; "you're welcome to have it."

"See here," said the total stranger, "if you're half the brick you seem—and you are or you wouldn't have let me snore all night on the carpet—ring for Alphonse and send him out to get some bromo seltzer. There's a chemist's bang up against the hotel, and he's got that line of drugs."

Fairfax put out his arm and rang from the bed. The young man waited dejectedly; having taken off his coat and collar, he looked somewhat mournfully at his silk hat which, the worse for his usage of it, had rolled in a corner of Fairfax's room.

Alphonse, who for a wonder was within a few steps of the room, answered the bell, his advent announced by the shuffling of his old slippers; but before he had knocked the young man slid across the room and stood flat behind the door so that, when it opened, his presence would not be observed by the valet.

The man, for whom Fairfax had not yet had occasion to ring, opened the door and stood waiting for the order. He was a small, round-faced fellow in a green barege apron, that came up and down and all over him. In his hand he carried a melancholy feather duster.

"Le dÉjeuner, Monsieur?" smiled Alphonse cordially, "un cafÉ complet?"

"Yes," acquiesced Antony eagerly, "and as well, would you go to the pharmacy and get me a bottle of bromo seltzer?"

"Bien, Monsieur." The valet looked much surprised and considered Fairfax's handsome, healthy face. "Bien, Monsieur," and he waited.

Fairfax was about to say: "Give me my waistcoat," but remembering his secluded friend, sprang out of bed and gave to Alphonse a five-franc piece.

"You're a brick," said the young man, coming out from behind the door. "I'm awfully obliged. Now let me get my head in a basin of water and I'll be back with you in a jiffy." And he darted out evidently into the next room, for Fairfax heard the door bang and lock.

Fairfax threw back his head and laughed. He was not utterly alone in France, he had a drunken neighbour, a fellow companion on the sixth floor of the Universe, which, after all, divides itself more or less into stories in more ways than one. He opened his window and let in the June morning, serene and lovely. It shone on him over chimney-pots and many roofs and slender towers in the far distance. He heard the dim noise of the streets. He had gone as far in his toilet as mixing the shaving water, when the valet returned with a tray and presented Fairfax with his first "petit dÉjeuner" in France. The young man thought it tempting—butter in a golden pat, with a flower stamped on it. The little rolls and something about the appearance of the little meal suggested his New Orleans home—he half looked to see a dusky face beam on him—"Massa Tony, chile"—and the vines at the window.

"Voici, Monsieur." Alphonse indicated the bromide. "I think everything is here." The intelligent servant had perceived the crushed silk hat in the corner and gave a little cough behind his hand.

Fairfax, six feet and more in his stockings, blond and good to look at, his bright humour, his charm, his soft Creole accent, pleased Alphonse.

"I see Monsieur has not unpacked his things. If I can serve Monsieur he has only to ask me." Alphonse picked up the opera hat, straightened it out and looked at it. "Shall I hang this up, Monsieur?"

"Do, behind the door, Alphonse."

The man did so and withdrew, and no sooner his rapid, light footsteps patted down the hall-way than Fairfax eagerly seated himself before his breakfast and poured out his excellent cafÉ au lait. The door was softly pushed in again, shut to and locked—the dissipated young gentleman seemed extremely partial to locked doors—and Fairfax's companion of the night before said in an undertone—

"Go slow, nobody in the hotel knows I'm in it."

Fairfax, who was not going slow over his breakfast, indicated the opera hat behind the door and the bromide.

"Hurrah for you and Alphonse," exclaimed the young fellow, who prepared himself a pick-me-up eagerly, and without invitation seated himself at Fairfax's table.

A good-looking young man of twenty-five, not more, with a cheerful, intelligent face in sober moments, now pale, with parched lips and eyes not clear yet. He had washed and his hair was smoothly brushed. He had no regularity of features such as Fairfax, being a well-set-up, ordinary young fellow, such as one might see in any American college or university. But there was a fineness in the lines of his mouth, a drollery and wit in his eyes, and he was thoroughly agreeable.

"I'm from the West," he said, putting his glass down empty. "Robert Dearborn, from Cincinnati—and I'm no end obliged to you, old chap, whoever you are. You've got a good breakfast there, haven't you?"

"Have some," Antony offered with real generosity, for he was famished.

"Well," returned Dearborn, "to tell you the truth, I feel as if I were robbing a sleeping man to take it, for I know how fiendishly hungry you must be. But, by Jove, I haven't had a thing to eat since"—and he laughed—"since I was a child."

He rinsed the glass that had held the bromide, poured out some black coffee for himself and took half of Fairfax's bread and half of his flower-stamped butter, and devoured it eagerly. When he had finished he wiped his mouth and genially held out his hand.

"Ever been hungry?"

Antony did not tell him how lately.

"Good," nodded Dearborn, "I understand. Passing through Paris?"

"Just arrived."

"Well, I've been here for two whole years. By the way," he questioned Antony, "you haven't told me your name."

Fairfax hesitated because of a fancy that had come into his mind when he had discovered the loss of his fortune.

"Thomas Rainsford," he said; then, for he could not deny his home, "from New Orleans."

"Ah!" exclaimed his companion, "that's why you speak such ripping French. Now, do you know, to hear me you wouldn't think I'd seen a gendarme or a Parisian pavement. My Western accent, you must have remarked it, refuses to mix with a foreign language. I can speak French," he said calmly, "but they can't understand me yet; I have been here two years."

There was a knock at the door. Dearborn started and held up his hand.

"If Monsieur will give me his boots," suggested the mellow voice of Alphonse, "I will clean them."

Fairfax picked up his boots, the big shoe and the smaller one, and handed out the pair through a crack in the door.

When once again the rabbit steps had pattered away—"Go on dressing," Dearborn said, "don't let me stop you. You don't mind my sitting here a minute until Alphonse does with his boot-cleaning operations. He's a magician at that. They keep their boots clean, here, if they don't wash."

Dearborn made himself comfortable, accepted a cigarette from the packet the landlady had given Fairfax, and put his feet on the chair that Fairfax had vacated.

"I went out last night to a little supper with some friends of mine. The banquet rather used me up."

He smiled, and Fairfax saw how he looked when he was more himself. His hair, as the water dried on it, was reddish, he was clean-shaven, his teeth were white and sound, his smile agreeable.

"Now, if I hadn't been drunk, I shouldn't have come back to the Universe. I was due a quarter of a mile away from here. They'll keep me when they find me. I haven't paid my bill here to Madame Poulet for six weeks. But they are decent, trustful sort of people and can't believe a chap won't ever pay. But I was fool enough to leave my father's cable in my room and Madame Poulet had it translated. I grant you it wasn't encouraging for a creditor, Rainsford."

Antony heard his name used for the first time, the R's rolled and made the most of. It seemed to bring back the dead.

"Listen to the cable," said the communicative young man: "'You can go to the devil. Not a cent more from me or your mother.'"

Fairfax, who was tying his cravat, turned around and smiled, and he limped over to his visitor.

"It's not the most friendly telegram I ever heard," he said.

"Step-father," returned the other briefly. "She knows nothing about it—my mother, I mean. I've been living on her money here for two years and over and it's gone; but before I take a penny from him ..."

"I understand," said Fairfax, going back to the mirror and beginning to brush his hair.

"Did you ever have a mother?" asked the red-haired young man with a queer look on his face, and added, "I see you have. Well, let's drop the subject, then, but you may discuss step-fathers all you choose."

Fairfax, for he was not Rainsford, yet, took a fancy to his visitor, a fancy to his rough, deep voice; he liked the eyes that were clearing fast, liked the kindly spirited face and the ready, boy-like confidence.

"What are you up to in Paris?" he asked Dearborn, regarding him with interest.

"I'm a playwright," said the other simply.