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So it chanced that Whit fell into the lowest vice any American can show in Paris. He constantly picked up beefy and lonesome Americans and took them to precisely those places in Paris, like the Eiffel Tower, which were most taboo to the brave lads of the Fanfaron.

He tried frenziedly to paint one good picture at Monsieur Schoelkopf’s; tried to rid himself of facility. He produced a decoration in purple and stony reds which he felt to be far from his neat photography.

And looking upon it, for once Monsieur Schoelkopf spoke: “You will
be, some time, a good banker. ”

The day before Whit sailed for summer in Zenith, he took Isadora to the little glassed-in restaurant that from the shoulder of Montmartre looks over all Paris. She dropped her flowery airs. With both hands she held his, and besought him:

“Whit! Lover! You are going back to your poisonous Middle West. Your people will try to alienate you from Paris and all the freedom, all the impetus to creation, all the strange and lovely things that will exist here long after machines have been scrapped. Darling, don’t let them get you, with their efficiency and their promise of millions!”

“Silly! Of course! I hate business. And next year I’ll be back here with you!”

He had told the Fanfaron initiates not to see him off at the train. Feeling a little bleak, a little disregarded by this humming city of Paris, he went alone to the station, and he looked for no one as he wretchedly followed the porter to a seat in the boat train.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the shouts of a dozen familiars from the Fanfaron. It wasn’t so important—though improbable—that they should have paid fifty centimes each for a billet de quai, for that they should have arisen before nine o’clock to see him off was astounding.

Isadora’s kind arms were around him, and she was wailing, “You won’t forget us; darling, you won’t forget me!”

Miles O’Sullivan was wringing his hand and crying, “Whit, lad, don’t let the dollars get you!”

All the rest were clamoring that they would feverishly await his return.

As the train banged out, he leaned out waving to them, and he was conscious that whatever affectations and egotism they had shown in their drool at the Fanfaron, all pretentiousness was wiped now from their faces, and that he loved them.

He would come back to them.

All the way to Cherbourg he fretted over the things he had not seen in Paris. He had been in the Louvre only three times. He had never gone to Moret or to the battlemented walls of Provins.

Whit ran into the living room at Floral Heights, patted T. Jefferson on the shoulder, kissed his mother and muttered:

“Gee, it certainly is grand to be back!”

“Oh, you can speak to us in French, if you want to,” said T. Jefferson Dibble, “we’ve been studying it so we can return to Paris with you some time. Avez vous oo un temps charmant cette—uh— year?”

“Oh, sure, oui. Say, you’ve redecorated the breakfast room. That red-and-yellow tiling certainly is swell. ”

“Now coutez—coute, moh fis. It’s not necessary for you, Whitney, now that you have become a man of the world, to spare our feelings. I know, and you know, that that red-and-yellow tiling is vulgar. But to return to pleasanter topics, I long for your impressions of Paris. How many times did you go to the Louvre?”

“Oh. Oh, the Louvre! Well, a lot. ”

“I’m sure of it. By the way, a funny thing happened, Whitney. A vulgarian by the name of Titus, from Buffalo, if I remember, wrote to me that he met you in Paris. A shame that such a man, under pretense of friendship with me, should have disturbed you. ”