The actor, an æsthete to his finger-tips, looked with satisfaction about the long, low room, wainscoted in vari-colored books, its great old-fashioned fireplace filled with fragrant pine-boughs, and overhung by a portrait in an oval frame of a dim gentleman in a stock; the mantel crowded with pipes, a punching-bag and dumb-bells in one end of the room, in the other an old square piano, open and inviting, showing evidence of constant use; shabby, comfortable chairs; a large desk with many pigeon-holes, very neat and business-like. Indeed, the whole room, despite its odd agglomeration of furnishings, was neat, meticulously neat, even to the spotless curtains, darned in many places by Jemima and the ladies of the Altar Guild. Farwell spoke his thought aloud, "There's more character in this room of yours, Benoix, than in all that fine, self-conscious, art-y house of mine," he declared. "It could give pointers to any studio I know. It's the real thing!" Philip flushed with surprise and pleasure. His unpretentious household gods were very dear to him, dear as they are sometimes to women. They meant more than furniture to the lonely young man; they meant home, and kindred, and all the gentler things that life had denied him. Channing became lyrical over the salad, and was moved to propose a toast. He lifted his glass of beer--the best Philip's cellar afforded. "Here's to the greatest nation on earth, one drop of whose blood is worth more to Art than all the stolid corpuscles that clog the veins of lesser races. Without it what man can hope to write great prose, or paint great pictures, or mix a great salad? _Vive la France!_--Benoix, who taught you how to cook?" "My father," said Philip, in a low voice. He had not often occasion to speak of his father, except to Mrs. Kildare. "I knew it! There's nothing Anglo-Saxon or negroid about this cooking. Again I say, _Vive la France!_" After they had gone, Philip did not go immediately to bed. He was too excited--as excited, he thought, smiling, as little Jemima had been with the success of her first party. He put out the lights, and sat by his window in the dark for a long time, going over in his mind the talk of that night. Good man-talk it had been, touching on all the big things that occupy the world's thought to-day, which hitherto Philip had got for himself only out of books and periodicals. He had listened eagerly to these young men, who were interested in larger matters than crops and stock-breeding and local politics. And they had listened to him--he knew that. More than once a remark of Channing recurred to him: "You're too big for this place, you know. Before long you'll be moving on." It was a thought that he had often put deliberately out of his mind. His bishop had been the first to suggest it, some years before.