He was entering New York Harbour at an early hour in the morning. It was November, and over the river and over the city hung the golden haze. If the lines of the objects, if the shore and buildings were crude, their impression was not so to him. To and fro the ferries plied from shore to shore, and their whistles and the whistles of the tugs spoke shrilly and loudly to the morning, but there was nothing nasal or blatant to him in the noises. He found the scene, the light of the morning, the greeting of the city as it stirred to life, enchanting. He had gone away from it six years ago, a broken-hearted man, and it seemed now as though he had made his history in an incredibly short time. Down in the hold of the boat, in their cases, reposed his sculptures, some thirty statues and models that he had brought for his exposition in New York. He had come back celebrated. His visions and his dreams so far had been fulfilled. Once again all his past, all his emotions, his tears and aspirations, culminated in this hour. This was his return, but not as Antony Fairfax. He did not know that he should ever take his old name again. He had made the name of Thomas Rainsford famous, and the fact gave him a singular tender satisfaction, linking him with a dear man who had loved him. He felt almost as though his friend were resurrected or given a new draught of immortal life every time the name was said. A young man came up to him, pencil in hand, his look eager and appealing, and Fairfax recognized a reporter in search of a good newspaper story. He understood the poor clothes, the dogged determination. "You want a story?" he said. "Well, sit down." The newspaper man, highly delighted with the sculptor's sympathy and understanding, wrote his interview with enthusiasm. Fairfax talked for five minutes, and said at the close, "I had not intended to be interviewed. But you are a rising man; you have secured me against my will." The reporter put up his pad. "Thank you, Mr. Rainsford; but this is so impersonal. I would like some of your views on art. They tell me you have had a tough fight for success and existence." "Many of us have that," said Fairfax. "Your ideals, sir?" The young chap was only twenty-one. It was his first interview. Fairfax smiled. "Downstairs in the hold are thirty cases of my work, the labour of the last six years. Go to my exposition, and you will see my ideals." As the other took his leave Antony saw himself again, poor, unknown, as he had set foot in New York. There was a deputation on the wharf to meet him from the Academy of Design, and he walked down the gang-plank alone, leaving no one behind him in France who stood to him for family, and he would find no one in America who should mean to him hearth and home. They had taken rooms for him in the old Hotel Plaza overlooking 59th Street; there, toward the afternoon of the first day, he found himself at three o'clock, alone in his parlour overlooking Central Park.