The middle of January arrived, and he thought Cedersholm would have come by that time and supposed that they would be off for Rome.

The study of his mother was accepted by the jury for the exhibition in the Rue de SÈvres, and Fairfax went on the opening day, saw his name in the catalogue, and his study on the red pedestal made a dark mellow note amongst the marbles. He stood with the crowd and listened with beating heart to the comments of the public. He watched the long-haired Bohemians and the worldly people, the Philistine and the Élite as they surged, a little sea of criticism, approval, praise and blame, through the rooms.

"Pas mal, Ça." "Here is a study that is worth looking at." "By whom is this?"

And each time that he heard his name read aloud—Thomas Rainsford—he was jealous of it for Antony. It seemed a sacrilege, a treachery. He wandered about, looking at the other exhibits, but could not keep away from his own, and came back timidly, happily, to stand by the figure of his mother in her chair. There was much peace in the little work of art, much repose. He seemed to see himself again a boy, as he had been that day when she asked for the cherries and he had run off to climb for them—and had gone limping ever since. She had sat languidly with her book that day, as she sat now, immortalized by her son in clay.

Some one came up and touched his arm. "Bonjour, Rainsford." It was Barye, his chief. He had been looking at the group behind the sculptor. He said briefly: "Je vous fÉlicite, monsieur." He smiled on his journeyman from under shaggy brows. "They will talk about you in the Figaro. C'est exquis."

Fairfax thanked him and watched Barye's face as the master scrutinized and went around the little figure. He put out his hand to Fairfax.

"Come and see me to-morrow. I want to talk to you."

Fairfax answered that he would be sure to come, just as though he were not modelling at the studio for ten francs a day. He had been careful all along not to repeat his error of years before. He had avoided personalities with his master, as he toiled like a common day-labourer, content to make his living and to display no originality; but now he felt a sense of fellowship with the great Frenchman and walked along by Barye's side to the door, proud to be so distinguished. He glanced over the crowd in the hope of seeing Her, but instead, walking through the rooms, his eyeglass in his eye, the little red badge of the Legion of Honour in his coat, he saw Cedersholm.

The following day, when he went to the exhibition, the man at the door handed a catalogue to Fairfax and pointed to No. 102, against which was the word "Sold." His price had been unpretentious.

"Moreover," said the man, "No. 102 will certainly have a medal."

Fairfax, his hands in his empty pockets, was less impressed by that prognostication than by the fact that there was money for him somewhere. The man opened the desk and handed Fairfax an envelope with five hundred francs in it.

"Who was the purchaser?" Fairfax looked at the receipt he was given to sign and read: "Sold to Mr. Cedersholm."

"Mais non," he exclaimed shortly, "Ça, non!"

He was assured, however, that it was the American sculptor and no other. On his way home he reflected, "She sent him to purchase it." And the five hundred francs bill burned in his pocket. Then he called himself a fool and asked what possible interest she could still have in Thomas Rainsford, whose news she had not taken in four weeks. And also, he reflected, that so far as Cedersholm was concerned, Thomas Rainsford had nothing to do with Antony Fairfax. "He merely admired my work," he reflected bitterly. "He has seemed always singularly to admire it."

He paid some pressing debts, got his clothes out of pawn, left Dearborn what he wanted, and was relieved when the last sou of the money was gone.

"I wonder, Bob," he said to Dearborn, "when I shall ever have any 'serious money.'" And with sudden tenderness he thought of Bella.

Dearborn, who had also recovered a partially decent suit of clothes, displayed his trousers and said—

"I think some chap has been wearing my clothes and stretched them." They hung loose on him.

Fairfax laughed. "You have only shrunk, Bob, that's all. You need feeding up."

The studio had undergone a slight transformation, which the young men had been forced to accede to. A grand piano covered with a bright bit of brocade stood in the centre of the studio, a huge armchair, with a revolving smoking-table, by its side. The chair was for Dearborn to loll in and dream in whilst Potowski played and sang at the piano. Dearborn was thus supposed to work the libretto for "Fiametta."

Potowski, who came in at all hours, charmed the very walls with his voice, sang and improvised; Fairfax worked on the study he was making for Barye, and Dearborn, in the big chair, swathed in his wrapper, made notes, or more often fell serenely to sleep, for he worked all night on his own beloved drama, and if it had not been for Potowski he would have slept nearly all day. The Pole, at present, had gone to Belgium to fetch his wife, who had been away for several weeks.

When there was a knock on the door on this afternoon, the young men, used to unexpected visitors, cried out—

"Come in—entrez donc!"

But there was the murmur of a woman's voice without, and Fairfax, his sculpting tools in his hands, opened the door. It was Mrs. Faversham.

He stood for a dazed second unable even to welcome her. Dearborn sprang up in embarrassment and amusement. Mrs. Faversham herself was not embarrassed.

"Is not Potowski here?" shaking hands with Antony. "I had expected to meet him. Didn't he tell you that I was coming? I understood that you expected me."

Fairfax shut the door behind her. "You are more than welcome. This is my friend, Mr. Dearborn. You may have heard Potowski speak of him."

She shook hands with the red-haired playwright, whom she captivated at once by her cordiality and her sweet smile. Of course she had heard of him and the libretto. Potowski had given her to understand that she might hear the overture of "Fiametta."

The young men exchanged glances and neither of them told her that Potowski was in Belgium. Dearborn rolled the chair toward her and waved to it gracefully.

"This is the chair of the muses, Mrs. Faversham, and not one of them has been good enough to sit in it before now."

She laughed and sat down, and Fairfax looked at her with joy.

"We must give Mrs. Faversham some tea," said Dearborn, "and if you will excuse me while we wait for Potowski, I will pop out and get some milk and you boil the tea-kettle."

He took his hat and cape and ran out, leaving them alone.

Mrs. Faversham looked at the sculptor in his velveteen working clothes, the background of his workshop, its disorder and its poverty around him.

"How nice it is here," she said. "I don't wonder you are a hermit."

"Oh," he exclaimed, "don't compliment this desolation."

She interrupted him. "I think it is charming. You feel the atmosphere of living and of work. You seem to see things here that are not visible in rooms where nothing is accomplished."

He sat down beside her. "Are there such rooms?" he asked. "I don't believe it. The most thrilling dramas take place, don't they, in the most commonplace settings?"

As though she feared that Dearborn would come back, she said quickly—

"I don't know why you should have been so unkind. I have heard nothing of you for weeks, do you know, excepting through Potowski. It wasn't kind, was it?"

"I was rude and ungrateful, but I could not do otherwise."

She bent forward to him as he sat on the divan. "I wonder why?" she asked. "Were we not friends? Could you not have trusted me? Do you think me so narrow and conventional—so stupid?"

"Oh!" he exclaimed, and he smiled a little, thinking of Nora Scarlet. "It is not quite what you think."

He was angry with her, with the facts of their existence, with her great fortune, and her engagement to the man he despised above all others, his own incognito and the fact that she had sent Cedersholm to buy his study, and that he could not express to her, without insult, his feelings or tell her frankly who he was.

"You were not kind, Mr. Rainsford."

He reflected that she thought him the lover of a Latin Quarter student, if she thought at all, which she probably did not. Without humility he confessed—

"Yes, I have been very rude indeed." He wiped his clay-covered hands slowly, each finger separately, his eyes bent. He rose abruptly. "Would you care to look at a study I am making for Barye?" He drew off the cloths from the clay he was engaged in modelling. She only glanced at the group and he asked her, almost roughly: "Why did you buy by proxy my little study in the exhibition? Why did you ask Cedersholm to do so?"

Mrs. Faversham looked at him in frank surprise. "Your study in the exhibition? I knew nothing of it. I did not know you had exhibited. I have been ill for a fortnight, and have not seen a paper or heard a hit of news."

He was softened. His emotions violently contradicted themselves, and he saw now that she had grown a little thinner and looked pale.

"Have you been ill? What a boor you must think me never to have returned!"

She was standing close to the pedestal and rested her hand on the support near his wooden tools. She wore a beautiful grey drees, such a one as only certain Parisian hands can create. It fitted her to perfection, displaying her shape, and, where the fur opened at the neck, amongst the lace he saw the gleaming and flashing of a jewel whose value would have made a man rich. Already the air was sweet with the fragrance of the scent she used. She had been in grey when he had first seen her on the day of the unveiling of the monument. Fairfax passed his hand across his eyes, as though to brush away a vision which, like a mist, was still between them. He put his hand down over hers on the pedestal.

"I love you," he said very low. "That is the matter. That is the trouble. I love you. I want you to know it. I dare love you. I am perfectly penniless and I am glad of it. I want to owe everything to my art, to climb through the thorns to where I shall some day reach. I am proud of my poverty and of my emancipation from everything that others think is necessary to happiness. I am rude. I cannot help it. I shall never see you again. I ought not to speak to you in my barren room. I know that you are not free and that you are going to be married, but you must hear once what I have to tell you. I love you.... I love you."

She was as motionless as the grey study. He might himself have made and carved "the woman in her entirety," for she stood motionless before him.

"Tell Cedersholm," he said bitterly, "tell him that a poor sculptor, a struggler who lives to climb beyond him, who will some day climb beyond him, loves you."

The arrogance and pride of his words and her immobility affected him more than a reproof or even speech. He took her in his arms, and she was neither marble nor clay, but a woman there.

"Tell him," he murmured close to her cheek, "that I have kissed you and held you."

And here she said; "Hush!" almost inaudibly, and released herself. She was trembling. She put her hands to her eyes. "I shall tell him nothing. He is nothing to me. I sent him away when he first came, a fortnight ago. I shall never see Cedersholm again."

"What!" cried Tony, looking at her in rapture, "what, you are free?" At his heart there was triumph, excitement, wonder, all blending with the bigger emotion. He heard himself ask her eagerly: "Why, why did you do this?"

There were tears on her eyelids.

His face flushing, his eyes illumined, he looked down on her and lifted her face to him in both his hands.

"Why?"

"I think you know," she murmured, her lips trembling.

He gave a cry, and as he was about again to embrace her they heard Dearborn's step upon the stairs.

Mrs. Faversham was in the window looking out upon Paris, and Fairfax was modelling on his study when the playwright came in with a can of milk, some madeleines and a pot of jam.

After she had gone he wanted to escape and be alone, but Dearborn chatted, pacing the studio, whilst Fairfax dressed and shaved, praising the visitor.

"She's a great lady, Tony. What breeding and race! And she's not what the books call 'indifferent' to you."

"Go to the devil, Dearborn!"

Dearborn went to work instead, not to lose the inspiration of the lovely woman. He began a new scene, and dressed his character in dove grey with silver fox at her throat.