"Perhaps you crawl out to Lavenue's and sit there in the evening watching the people sip and talk, the girls sauntering home, or the students who are gassing forever. It doesn't seem to make any difference what you do then, whether you go on a loaf for a month and fool with those who play, or go home to bed and back to work in the morning. You think the idea will come some day whenever it gets ready, and that there is precious little use in slaving away on a one franc fifty déjeuner."
"Don't you think of home, America, and us who are anxious for you?"
"It seems so far away; and do you care unless I make a strike?"
The girl was silent; her face was turned away while she played with his answer.
"You know we do," shielding herself with a neutral plural.
"There's the other side," the young man's voice sounded out more buoyantly.
"You go around to some friends' studio and see what they are up to, and get ideas and go home with more spirit; or something good comes along, a picture is accepted, an order comes in. You think you have got there all right and it's only the question of a little patience. There's a good dinner or a little trip in the country—it's fine around Paris you know. Then I think of coming home with some kind of a rep., and how all of you will be glad—you at any rate, Miss Thornton?"
The doctor sighed and crept away.
"The condition for the fever," he muttered.