"Apologies are hateful," said Lady Derl. "They're so final. To see a fine young quarrel, in the prime of life, die by lightning--sad! sad!" She started drawing off her gloves. "Let's have tea." As she poured tea for them she asked, "And what's the real reason you two aren't coming to my dinner?" Leighton picked up the maimed kid and laid it on the tea-tray. He nodded toward Lewis. "He made it, I'm going to gamble a bit on him." "Poor little thing!" said Lady Derl, poking the two-legged kid with her finger. "I'm going to put him under Le Brux,--Saint Anthony,--if he'll take him," continued Leighton. "We leave for Paris to-morrow." "Under Saint Anthony?" repeated Lady Derl. "H--m--m! Perhaps you are right. But Blanche, Berthe, and Vi will hold it against me." When Lewis was alone with his father, he asked: "Does Lady Derl belong to the Old Guard?" "You wouldn't think it, but she does," said Leighton,--"inside." CHAPTER XIX "My boy," said Leighton to Lewis two days later, as they were threading a narrow street in the shadow of Montmartre, "you will meet in a few moments Le Brux, the only living sculptor. You will call him _Maître_ from the start. If he cuffs you or swears at you, call him _Mon Matre_. That's all the French you will need for some months." Leighton dodged by a sleepy concierge with a grunted greeting and climbed a broad stone stairway, then a narrower flight. He knocked on a door and opened it. They passed into an enormous room, cluttered, if such space could be said to be cluttered, with casts, molding-boards, clay, dry and wet, a throne, a couch, a workman's bench, and some dilapidated chairs. A man in a smock stood in the midst of the litter. When Lewis's eye fell upon him as he turned toward them, the room suddenly became dwarfed. The man was a giant. A tremendous head, crowned with a mass of grayish hair, surmounted a monster body. The voice, when it came, did justice to such a frame. "My old one, my friend, Létonne! Thou art well come. Thou art the saving grace to an idle hour." Once more Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite unintelligible. But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his brain of action. They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after another. Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust that could not hide their wondrous contour. Others hung upon the wall. Some were fragments. A monster group, half finished, held the center of the floor. A ladder was beside it. Leighton got up and strolled around. "What's new?" he asked. His eyes fell on the cast of an arm, a fragment. The arm was outstretched. It was the arm of a woman. So lightly had it been molded that it seemed to float. It seemed pillowed on invisible clouds. "_Matre"_, said Leighton, "I want that. How much?"