He wrote her that he should not be able to go to Versailles. He deserted his day's work at Barye's and remained at home modelling. And Dearborn, seeing Fairfax's distraction, went out early and did not return until dark. Fairfax found himself alone again, alone with his visions, alone with his pride, alone with powerful and new emotions.

Sometimes in January, in the middle of the month, days come that surprise the Parisians with their inconstancy and their softness. The sun shone out suddenly and the sky was as blue as in Italy.

Fairfax could see the people strolling along the quays, with coats open, and the little booksellers did a thriving business and the "bateaux mouche" shot off into the sunlight bound toward the suburbs which Fairfax had learned in the summer time to know and love. Versailles would be divine on such a day.

His hours spent at the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne must have been impersonal. His first essay he destroyed and began again. He did not want to bring these intimate visits suddenly to an end. But when his sitter very courteously began to question him, he was uncommunicative. He could not tell her the truth. He did not wish to romance or to lie to her. Mrs. Faversham, both sensitive and "fine," respected his reticence. But she found out about him. They talked of art and letters and life in general, circling around life in particular, and Fairfax revealed himself more than he knew, although of his actual existence he told nothing. He enjoyed the charm of the society of a worldly woman, of a clever woman. He fed his mind and cultivated his taste, delighted his eyes with the graceful picture she made, sitting, her head on her hand, posing for her portrait. Her features were not perfect, but the ensemble was lovely and he modelled with tenderness and pleasure until the little bas-relief was magically like her. He was forced to remember that the study was intended as a present for Cedersholm. He was very silent and very often wondered why she asked him so constantly to her house, why she should be so interested in so ungracious a companion. This morning, in his studio on the Quai, he unwrapped his statue of his mother. It was a figure sitting in her chair, a book in her hand, as he had seen her countless times on the veranda of the New Orleans house, dreaming, her face lifted, her eyes looking into the distance. He went back to his work with complicated feelings and a heart at which there was a new ache. He had hardly expected that this statue, left when he had gone to take up the study of another woman, would charm him as it did. He began to model. As he worked, he thought the face was singularly like Bella's—a touch to the head, to the lips, and it was still more like the young girl. Another year was gone. Bella was a woman now. Everything, as he modelled, came back to him vividly—all the American life, with its rush and struggle. So closely did it come, so near to him, that he threw down his tools to walk up and down in the sunlight pouring through the big window. He took up his tools and began modelling again. The statuette was tenderly like his mother. He smoothed the folds at her waist—and saw under the clay the colour of the violet lawn with its sprinkling flowers of darker violet. He touched the frills he had indicated around the throat—and felt the stirring of the Southern breeze across his hand and smelled the jasmine. He paused after working for two hours, standing back, resting his lame limb and musing on the little figure. It grew to suggest all womanhood: Molly, as he had seen her under the lamp-light—Mrs. Faversham, as he had watched her leaning on her hand—not Bella. He looked and thought. Bella was a child, a little girl. There was nothing reposeful or meditative about Bella, yet he had seen her pore over a book, her hair about her face. Would she ever sit like this, tranquil, reposeful, reading, dreaming? The face was like her, but the resemblance passed.