His face changed. “I have become a popular painter, you mean.” “You are not satisfied?” She put the question softly. He shrugged his shoulders. “One becomes what one is fit to become. I’m a lazy devil, Anne. It wasn’t in me to bear the heat and burden of the day without my hire. I have learnt to give the public what it wants, and to laugh in my sleeve at its stupid shouting. The result is that in every paper the world is assured that I have achieved an international reputation. And next week I shall stand at the head of a staircase, solemnly shaking by the hand, innumerable stupid people who know nothing, and care less about art, but have come because it is one of the functions of the season, to stare at the President of the International Art Congress. _Quelle farce!_” 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.” “Then France is the poorer by three masterpieces.” “France will get them back at my death.” “You have arranged that?” She nodded. “They belong to his country, of course.” He came and sat beside her again. “I told you that the Luxembourg had bought my portrait of you?” “Yes. Dear François the news gave me more pleasure than anything I have heard about you for a long time.” “It was to be my masterpiece, if you remember. They’re quite right. I’ve never done anything to touch it since. It belongs to my youth.” He saw that she was pale, and that her eyes looked sad.