Antony lit a cigarette and Dearborn lighted his from Antony's. The two friends settled themselves comfortably. It was the close of the day. Without, as usual, rolled the sea of the Paris streets, going to, going with the river's tide, and going away from it; the impersonal noise always made for them an accompaniment not disagreeable. The last light of the spring day fell on Fairfax's uncovered work, on the damp clay with the fresh marks of his instruments. He sat in his corduroys, a red scarf at his throat, a beautiful manly figure half curled up on the divan. The last of the day's light fell too on Dearborn's reddish hair, on his fine intelligent face. Fairfax said-- "Now tell me everything, Bob, from the beginning, from the window as you looked over the chimney-pots with the hyacinthine smoke curling up in the air--tell me everything, to the last word the manager said." "Hark!" exclaimed Dearborn, lifting his hand. "Nora is coming. I want to tell it to her as well. No one can tell twice alike the story of his first success--the first agony of first success." He caught his breath and struck Fairfax a friendly blow on his chest. "It will be a success, thank God! There is Nora," and he crossed the studio to let Nora Scarlet in. CHAPTER XX The third day he went up to see her and found her in the garden, a basket on her arm, cutting flowers. She wore a garden hat covered with roses and carried a pair of gilded shears with which to snip her flowers. As Antony came down the steps of the house she dropped the scissors into the basket with her garden gloves. She lifted her cheek to him. "You may kiss me, dear," she said; "no one will see us but the flowers and the birds." Antony bent to kiss her. It seemed to him as though his arms were full of flowers. "If you had not come to-day, I should have gone to you. You look well, Tony," she said. "I don't believe you have been ill at all." "My work, Mary." She took his arm and started towards the house. "You must let me come and see what wonderful things you are doing." "I am doing nothing wonderful," he said slowly. "It has taken me all this time to realize I was never a sculptor; I have been so atrociously idle, Mary." "But you need rest, my dear Tony." "I shall not need any rest until I am an old man." He caressed the hand that lay on his arm. They walked past the flower-beds, and she picked the dead roses, cutting the withered leaves, and talking to him gaily, telling him all she had done during the days of their separation, and suddenly he said-- "You do not seem to have missed me." "Everywhere," she answered, pressing his arm. They walked together slowly to the house, where she left her roses in the hall and took him into the music-room, where they had been last when he left her, the afternoon following the luncheon. "I must impress her indelibly on my mind," Antony thought. "I may never see her again."