In the evenings Fairfax would limp home. Five days of the week he went to Barye's studio and worked for the master. Twice a week he went to the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. Just how his friend spent his time when he was not in the studio Dearborn wondered vainly. The sculptor grew less and less communicative, almost morose. Tony took to smoking countless cigarettes and sitting in the corner of the big divan, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes fixed on some object which Dearborn could not see. He would listen, or appear to, whilst Dearborn read his play; or draw for him the scenario
for a new play; or the young man would read aloud bits of verse or prose that he loved and found inspiring. And Antony, more than once, could hear his own voice as he had declaimed aloud to the little cousins on a winter's afternoon, "St. Agnes' Eve, how bitter chill it was," or some other favourite repeated to shining eyes and flushed attention. Very often what Dearborn read was neither familiar nor distinguishable, for Fairfax was thinking about other things. They were not always alone in the workroom. Dearborn had friends, and those of them who had not gone away on other quests or been starved out or pushed out, would come noisily in of an evening, bringing with them perhaps a man with a fiddle and a man with a flute, and they would dance and there would be beer and "madeleines" and gay amusement of a very inoffensive kind, of a youthful kind. There would be dancing and singing, and sometimes Fairfax would take part in it all and sing with them in his pleasant baritone and smile upon them; but he liked it best when they were alone, and Dearborn did too; and in Fairfax's silence and the other man's absorption they nevertheless daily grew firmer and faster friends.
"Bob," Fairfax said—and as he spoke he abruptly interrupted Dearborn in the most vital scene of his act—"I can't take a penny from her for this portrait."
Dearborn dropped his manuscript on his knee. His expression was that of a slightly hurt egotism, for he had sat up all night working over this scene and burned all day to read it to Fairfax.
"Well, anyhow, don't ask me to cough up the two hundred and fifty francs. That's all I ask," he said a little curtly.
"I shall give her some study, one of these other statuettes," Fairfax said moodily, "some kind of return for the five hundred francs."
"She wouldn't care for anything I have got, would she, Tony?" Dearborn put his hands in the ample pockets and displayed his voluminous wrapper. "I'm crazy about this dressing-gown," he said affectionately. "It has warmed and sheltered my best thoughts. It has wrapped around and comforted my fainting heart. It's hatched ideas for me; it's been a plaidie to the angry
airs. Tony, she wouldn't take the dressing-gown, would she?"
"Rot!" exclaimed his friend fiercely. "Don't be an ass. Don't you see how I feel?"
"No, I don't," said the other simply. "I am not a mind reader. I'm an imaginator. I can make up a lot of stuff about your feeling. I daresay I do invent. You will see this in my play some day. You are really an inspiration, old man, but as for having an accurate idea of your feelings...! For three weeks, ever since that banknote fluttered amongst the crumbs of our table, you have scarcely said a word to me, not a whole paragraph." He shook his finger emphatically. "If I were not absorbed myself, no doubt I should be beastly, diabolically lonesome."