fresh activity. The north light streamed in upon two or three fresh
canvases, the place seemed full of enthusiasm, and you could see its
source, at present quiescent under the influence of tobacco, in
Armour's face.

'You have taken a new line,' I said, pointing to a file of camels,
still half obscured by the dust of the day, coming along a mountain
road under a dim moon. They might have been walking through time
and through history. It was a queer, simple thing, with a world of
early Aryanism in it.

'Does that say anything? I'm glad. It was to me articulate, but I
didn't know. Oh, things have been going well with me lately. Those
two studies over there simply did themselves. That camp scene on
the left is almost a picture. I think I'll put a little more work
on it and give it a chance in Paris. I got in once, you know.
Champ de Mars. With some horses.'

'Did you, indeed?' I said. 'Capital.' I asked him if he didn't
atrociously miss the life of the Quarter, and he surprised me by
saying that he never had lived it. He had been en pension instead
with a dear old professor of chemistry and his family at Puteaux,
and used to go in and out. A smile came into his eyes at the
rememberance, and he told me one after the other idyllic little
stories of the old professor and madame. Madame and the omelet--
madame and the melon--M. Vibois and the maire; I sat charmed. So
long as we remained in France his humour was like this, delicate and
expansive, but an accidental allusion led us across the Channel when
he changed. He had no little stories of the time he spent in
England. Instead he let himself go in generalizations, aimed, for