The more he thought about it, the more obvious his course became. During all his boyhood, art had been his single passion; during all his residence in Paris he had flung the best that was in him upon the altar of his artistic ambition; but now, without a single pang of regret, he resolved to give up art forever. He would see Vitoria on the morrow and come to a practical understanding with her: was he not always a practical man? Then he would reopen negotiation with his uncle and ask for a place in the elder Cartaret's business. Perhaps it would not even be necessary for him to return to America: he had the brilliant idea that his uncle's business--which was to say, the great monopoly of which his uncle's holdings were a small part--had never been properly "pushed" in France, and that Charles Cartaret was the man of all men to push it. The mystery that dear Vitoria made of some private obstacle? That, of course, was but the exaggeration of a sensitive girl; it was the long effect of some parental command or childish vow. He had only to wrest from her the statement of it in order to prove it so. It was some unpractical fancy wholly beneath the regard of a practical, and now wholly assured, man of affairs. By way of beginning a conservative business-career, Charlie went to the front window and, as he had done one day not long since, emptied his pockets for the delight of the hurdy-gurdy grinder. Then, singing under his breath, and inwardly blessing every pair of lovers that he passed, he went out for a long walk in the twilight. He walked along the Quai D'Orsay, beside which the crowded little passenger-steamers were tearing the silver waters of the Seine; crossed the white Pont de l'Alma; struck through the Trocadero gardens, and so, by the rue de Passy and the shaded Avenue Ingrez, came to the railway bridge, crossed it and strolled along the Allée des Fortifications. He walked until the night overtook him, and only then turned back through Auteuil and over the Pont Grenelle toward home. Alike in the perfumed shadows beneath the trees and under the yellow lamps of the Boulevard de Mont Parnasse, he walked upon the clouds of resolution. The city that has in her tender keeping the dust of many lovers, cradled him and drew him forward. Her soft breath fanned his cheek, her sweet voice whispered in his ears: "Trust me and obey me! Did I not know and shelter Gabrielle d'Estrées and her royal suitor? Have I not had a care for De Musset and for Heine? In that walled garden over there, Balzac dreamed of Mme. Hanska. Along this street Chopin wandered with George Sand." That whisper followed him to his room, still thrilling with Vitoria's visit. It charmed him into a wonderful sense of her nearness, into a belief that he was keeping ward over her as long as he sat by his windows and watched the stars go down and the pink dawn climb the eastern sky. It lulled him at last to sleep with his head upon his arms and his arms upon the mottled table.