The place was unchanged. There were still the habitues quarreling over their warring tenets of the brush; men drawn to the center of painting as moths are drawn to a candle; men of all nationalities and sorts, alike only in the general quality of their unkempt _grotesquerie_. There was music of a sort; a plaintive chord long-drawn from the violin occasionally made its sweet wail heard above the babel and through the reeking smoke of the room. Evidently, it was some occasion beyond the ordinary, and Steele, leaning over to the student nearest him, inquired in French: "Is there some celebration?" The stranger was a short man, with hair that fell low on his neck and greased his collar. He had a double-pointed beard and deep-set black eyes, which he kept fixed on his absinthe as it dripped drop by drop from the nickeled device attached to his _frappe_ glass. At the question, he looked up, astonished. "But is it possible monsieur does not know? We are all brothers here--brothers in the worship of the beautiful! Does not monsieur know?" Steele did not know, and he told the stranger so without persiflage. "It is that the great Marston has returned!" proclaimed the student, in a loud voice. "It is that the master has come back to us--to Paris!" The sound of his voice had brought others about the table. "Does monsieur know that the Seine flows?" demanded a pearly pretty model, raising her glass and flashing from her dark eyes a challenging glance of ridicule. Steele did not object to the good-humored baiting, but he looked about him, and was thankful that the girl on her way to Nice could not look in on this enthusiasm over the painter's home-coming; could not see to what Marston was returning; what character of devotees were pledging the promotion of the first disciple to the place of the worshiped master. Some half-drunken student, his hand upon the shoulder of a model, lifted a tilting glass, and shouted thickly, "_Vive l'art! Vive Marston!_" The crowd took up the shout, and there was much clinking of glass. Steele, with a feeling of deep disgust, rose to go. The other _quais_ of the Seine were better after all. But, as he reached for his hat, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and, turning, recognized, with a glow of welcome, the face of M. Herve. Like himself, M. Herve seemed out of his element, or would have seemed so had he also not had, like Steele, that adaptability which makes some men fit into the picture wherever they may find themselves. The two shook hands, and dropped back on the cushions of the wall seat. "I have heard the story," the Frenchman assured Steele. "Monsieur may spare himself the pain of repeating it. It is a miracle!" Steele was looking into his glass. "It is a most unhappy miracle," he replied. "But, _mon dieu_!" M. Herve looked across the table, tapping the Kentuckian's sleeve with his outstretched fingers. "It makes one think, _mon ami_--it makes one think!" His vis-a-vis only nodded, and Herve went on: