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He was hard hit. Tonight he had to bear the loneliness of a whole lifetime. Knowing himself so well, he could hardly believe that such a thing had ever happened to him, that such a woman had lain happy and contented in his arms. And now it was over. He turned out the light and sat down on his painter’s stool before the big window. Caesar, on the floor beside him, rested his head on his master’s knee. We must leave Hedger thus, sitting in his tank with his dog, looking up at the stars.

* * * * *

COMING, APHRODITE! This legend, in electric lights over the Lexington Opera House, had long announced the return of Eden Bower to New York after years of spectacular success in Paris. She came at last, under the management of an American Opera Company, but bringing her own chef d’orchestre.

One bright December afternoon Eden Bower was going down Fifth Avenue in her car, on the way to her broker, in Williams Street. Her thoughts were entirely upon stocks,–Cerro de Pasco, and how much she should buy of it,–when she suddenly looked up and realized that she was skirting Washington Square. She had not seen the place since she rolled out of it in an old-fashioned four-wheeler to seek her fortune, eighteen years ago.

“Arretez, Alphonse. Attendez moi,” she called, and opened the door before he could reach it. The children who were streaking over the asphalt on roller skates saw a lady in a long fur coat, and short, high-heeled shoes, alight from a French car and pace slowly about the Square, holding her muff to her chin. This spot, at least, had changed very little, she reflected; the same trees, the same fountain, the white arch, and over yonder, Garibaldi, drawing the sword for freedom. There, just opposite her, was the old red brick house.

“Yes, that is the place,” she was thinking. “I can smell the carpets now, and the dog,–what was his name? That grubby bathroom at the end of the hall, and that dreadful Hedger–still, there was something about him, you know–” She glanced up and blinked against the sun. From somewhere in the crowded quarter south of the Square a flock of pigeons rose, wheeling quickly upward into the brilliant blue sky. She threw back her head, pressed her muff closer to her chin, and watched them with a smile of amazement and delight. So they still rose, out of all that dirt and noise and squalor, fleet and silvery, just as they used to rise that summer when she was twenty and went up in a balloon on Coney Island!

Alphonse opened the door and tucked her robes about her. All the way down town her mind wandered from Cerro de Pasco, and she kept smiling and looking up at the sky.

When she had finished her business with the broker, she asked him to look in the telephone book for the address of M. Gaston Jules, the picture dealer, and slipped the paper on which he wrote it into her glove. It was five o’clock when she reached the French Galleries, as they were called. On entering she gave the attendant her card, asking him to take it to M. Jules. The dealer appeared very promptly and begged her to come into his private office, where he pushed a great chair toward his desk for her and signalled his secretary to leave the room.

“How good your lighting is in here,” she observed, glancing about. “I met you at Simon’s studio, didn’t I? Oh, no! I never forget anybody who interests me.” She threw her muff on his writing table and sank into the deep chair. “I have come to you for some information that’s not in my line. Do you know anything about an American painter named Hedger?”

He took the seat opposite her. “Don Hedger? But, certainly! There are some very interesting things of his in an exhibition at V—-‘s. If you would care to–“