While casual acquaintances--especially those in carriages--were denied access when he was absorbed on some work of importance, the younger painters--those who were struggling up the ladder--were always welcome. For these the concierge was given special instructions. Then everything would be laid aside; their sketches gone over and their points settled, no matter how long it took or how many hours of his precious time were given to their service. Many of these lads--not alone his own countrymen, but many who could not speak his language--often found a crisp, clean bank-note in their hands when the painter's fingers pressed their own in parting. Of only one thing was he intolerant, and that was sham. The insincere, the presuming and the fraudulent always irritated him; so did the slightest betrayal of a trust. Then his dark-brown eyes would flash, his shoulders straighten, and there would roll from his lips a denunciation which those who heard never forgot--an outburst all the more startling because coming from one of so gentle and equable a temperament. During all the years of his exile no word had come from Olivia. He had once seen Judge Colton's name in one of the Paris papers in connection with a railroad case in which some French investors were interested, but nothing more had met his eye. Had he been of a different temperament he would have forgotten her and that night in the improvised studio, but he was not constituted to forget. He was constituted to remember, and to remember with all his soul. Every day of his life he had missed her; never was there a night that she was not in his thoughts before he dropped to sleep. What would have been his career had fate brought them together before the blight fell upon her? What intimacies, what enjoyment, what ideals nurtured and made real. And the companionship, the instant sympathy, the sureness of an echo in her heart, no matter how low and soft his whisper! These thoughts were never absent from his mind.