He laughed a little. “It seems far enough away from that summer twenty years ago, when we all sat in that garden,” he nodded towards the open window, “and talked of our dreams and our ambitions. Ah! we were going to revolutionize art, weren’t we? We were going to bring the world to our feet like the young painters in L’Oeuvre, do you remember? The young painters who used to walk about Paris, talking, for ever talking, mad with hope and enthusiasm. And now? Henri is writing for La Presse ... Sacré tonnerre de Dieu, as Lantier and Sandoz used to remark so frequently. What stuff! And how it pays! (Henri has a flat, Rue Malesherbes—Empire right through.) Paul has abandoned music, and is making vast sums on the Bourse, and I am President of the International Art Congress.”
He paused.
“And René is dead,” said Anne.
There was a silence. The lamp-lit room with its colour and fragrance was very still. To both of them, their minds filled with the scenes of other days, it assumed for a moment an air of brilliant unreality, like a room seen in a dream. Outside, the trees whispered very softly.
“Whom the gods love——” began François.
He rose abruptly, and moved to the picture he had been examining when Anne entered.
“That’s the real stuff!” he exclaimed. “God! how good it is! How did you get this?” he asked.
“I bought it.”
He wheeled abruptly round. “Have you much of his work?”
“I bought all I could get. The Bathers and The Forest are in my room upstairs.”