There was a short, general conversation. Then Major Walters, declining the offer of whisky and soda in the dining-room, took his leave. Paragot accompanied him to the front door. When he returned, Mrs. Rushworth retired, as she always did after her game, and Joanna instead of remaining with us for an hour, as usual, pleaded fatigue and went to bed. "Master," said I, boyishly full of my new idea, "do you think Major Walters would sit to me? I don't mean as a commission--of course I couldn't ask him--but for practice. I should like to paint him as a knight in armour." "Why this lunatic notion?" asked my master. I explained. He looked at me for some time very seriously. There was a touch of pain in his tired blue eyes. "You are right, my little Asticot," he said, "and I was wrong. My perception is growing blunt. I regarded our friend as having fallen out of the War Office box of tin soldiers. Your vision has been keener. Breed counts for much; but for it to have full value there must be the _life_ as well. All the same, the notion of asking Major Walters to pose to you in a suit of armour is lunatic, and the sooner you finish Mrs. Rushworth and get back to Janot's the better. There is also Blanquette who must be bored to death in the Rue des Saladiers, with no one but Narcisse to bear her company." He put a cigarette into his mouth, but for some time did not light it although he held a match ready to strike in his fingers. His thoughts held him. "My son," he said at last, "I would give the eyes out of my head to have my violin." "Why, Master?" I asked. "Because," said he, "when one is afflicted with a divine despair, there is nothing for it like fiddling it out of the system." CHAPTER XXI PARIS again; Janot's; the organized confusion of the studio; the boisterous comradeship of my coevals; the Monday morning throng of models in all stages of non-attire crowding the staircases; the noisy café over the way; the Restaurant Didier where those of us, young men and maidens, who had princely incomes dined marvellously for one franc fifty, _vin compris_--such wine!--I writhe sympathetically at its memory; the squabbles, the new romances, the new slang on the tip of everyone's tongue; the studio in Menilmontant where the four of us slaved at never-to-be-purchased masterpieces; the dear, full-blooded, inspiring life again. Paris, too, which meant the Rue des Saladiers and Blanquette and Narcisse, and the grace of dear familiar things.