sun got low--all this was a vision of delight which floated before him
only to torture him with a sense of the impossible. All Frenchwomen were
not coquettes, he noted as he kept pace with his companion. She uttered
a word now and then for politeness' sake, but she never looked at him
and seemed not in the least to care that he was a well-favoured and
well-dressed young man. She cared for nothing but the young artist in
the shabby coat and the slouched hat, and for discovering where he had
set up his easel.

This was soon done. He was encamped under the trees, close to the
stream, and, in the diffused green shade of the little wood, couldn't
have felt immediate need of his umbrella. He received a free rebuke,
however, for forgetting it, and was informed of what he owed to
Longmore's complaisance. He was duly grateful; he thanked our hero
warmly and offered him a seat on the grass. But Longmore felt himself a
marplot and lingered only long enough to glance at the young man's
sketch and to see in it an easy rendering of the silvery stream and the
vivid green rushes. The young wife had spread her shawl on the grass at
the base of a tree and meant to seat herself when he had left them,
meant to murmur Chenier's verses to the music of the gurgling river.
Longmore looked a while from one of these lucky persons to the other,
barely stifled a sigh, bade them good-morning and took his departure. He
knew neither where to go nor what to do; he seemed afloat on the sea of
ineffectual longing. He strolled slowly back to the inn, where, in the
doorway, he met the landlady returning from the butcher's with the
lambchops for the dinner of her lodgers.

"Monsieur has made the acquaintance of the dame of our young painter,"
she said with a free smile--a smile too free for malicious meanings.
"Monsieur has perhaps seen the young man's picture. It appears that he's