“And you know Bouguereau?”

“Yes, and Henner, and Constant and Laurens, and Puvis de Chavannes and Dagnan and Courtois, and⁠—and all the rest of them!”

“And yet you say you are not an artist.”

“Pardon,” she said gravely, “did I say I was not?”

“Won’t you tell me?” he hesitated.

At first she looked at him, shaking her head and smiling, then of a sudden her eyes fell and she began tracing figures with her parasol in the gravel at her feet. Hastings had taken a place on the seat, and now, with his elbows on his knees, sat watching the spray drifting above the fountain jet. A small boy, dressed as a sailor, stood poking his yacht and crying, “I won’t go home! I won’t go home!” His nurse raised her hands to Heaven.

“Just like a little American boy,” thought Hastings, and a pang of homesickness shot through him.