rash defiance of fortune. Whether or not Mrs. Peyton's penance took this
form, she hoarded her substance to such good purpose that she was not only
able to give Dick the best of schooling, but to propose, on his leaving
Harvard, that he should prolong his studies by another four years at the
Beaux Arts. It had been the joy of her life that her boy had early shown
a marked bent for a special line of work. She could not have borne to see
him reduced to a mere money-getter, yet she was not sorry that their small
means forbade the cultivation of an ornamental leisure. In his college days
Dick had troubled her by a superabundance of tastes, a restless flitting
from one form of artistic expression to another. Whatever art he enjoyed
he wished to practise, and he passed from music to painting, from painting
to architecture, with an ease which seemed to his mother to indicate lack
of purpose rather than excess of talent. She had observed that these
changes were usually due, not to self-criticism, but to some external
discouragement. Any depreciation of his work was enough to convince him
of the uselessness of pursuing that special form of art, and the reaction
produced the immediate conviction that he was really destined to shine in
some other line of work. He had thus swung from one calling to another
till, at the end of his college career, his mother took the decisive step
of transplanting him to the Beaux Arts, in the hope that a definite course
of study, combined with the stimulus of competition, might fix his wavering
aptitudes. The result justified her expectation, and their four years in
the Rue de Varennes yielded the happiest confirmation of her belief in
him. Dick's ability was recognized not only by his mother, but by his
professors. He was engrossed in his work, and his first successes developed
his capacity for application. His mother's only fear was that praise was
still too necessary to him. She was uncertain how long his ambition would
sustain him in the face of failure. He gave lavishly where he was sure
of a return; but it remained to be seen if he were capable of production
without recognition. She had brought him up in a wholesome scorn of