During the following weeks it seemed to him he was chasing his soul and her own. In their daily intercourse--sweet, of course, tender, of course--there was a constant sense of limitation. He wanted her to share with him his love of the beautiful, but Mary Faversham was conventional. He would have spent hours with her in the Louvre, hanging over treasures, musing before pictures whose art he felt he could never sufficiently make his own. Mrs. Faversham followed him closely, but after a time watched the people. Whilst her lover--in love with all beauty--remained transfixed over the contemplation of a petrified rose found in the ruins of Pompeii, or intoxicated himself with the beauty of an urn, she would interrupt his meditation by speaking to him of unimportant things. She found resemblances in the little Grecian statues to her friends in society. Tony sighed and relinquished seeing museums with Mary. She patronized art with _largesse_ and generosity but he discovered it was one way to her of spending money, an agreeable, satisfying way to a woman of breeding and refinement. The bewitching charm of her clothes, her great expenditures on herself, made him open his blue eyes. Once he held her exquisitely shod foot in his hand, admiring its beauty and its slenderness. On the polished leather was the sparkle of her paste buckles; he admired the ephemeral web of her silk stocking, and was ashamed that the thought should cross his mind as to what this lovely foot represented of extravagance. But he had been with her when she bought the buckles on the Rue de la Paix; he knew the price they cost. Was the money making him sordid--hypercritical, unkind? Life for six months whirled round him. Mary Faversham dazzled and bewitched him, charmed and flattered him. Their engagement had not been made public. He ceased to work; he was at her beck and call; he went with her everywhere. At her house, in her box at the opera, he met all Paris. She was hardly ever alone with him; he made one of a group. Nevertheless, they were talked about. Several orders for busts were the outcome of his meeting fashionable Paris; but he did not work. Toward March he received word from America that his bas-relief under the name of Thomas Rainsford had won the ten thousand dollar prize. He felt like a prince. For some singular reason he told no one, not even Dearborn. In writing to him the committee had told him that according to the contracts the money would not be forthcoming until July. He had gone through so many bitter disappointments in his life that he did not want in the minds of his friends to anticipate this payment and be disappointed anew.