the corner of the Boulevard Edgar Quinet and demanded the reckoning. All that remained to them was less than fifty francs; they took it all, the soiled and nibbled little five-franc notes, the coppery one and two-franc pieces, the ten— and twenty-five— and fifty-centime pieces, and poured it into his hands, and stood there, guilty, silent and ashamed, before his astonished and reproachful face, because he had stood by them well and loyally all through that blind kaleidoscope of night, and it was New Year’s Eve, and they were drunk and gay, and, he had thought, rich Americans, and he had hired for, earned, expected, more.
“It’s all we have,” they said.
That ruddy robust man then did something that is perhaps rare in the annals of French taxidom, and which they never forgot.
After an astonished moment, while he looked at the little wad of bills and coins in his broad palm, he suddenly laughed loud and cheerfully, tossed the little wad of money in the air and caught it as it fell, stripped off a five-franc note and pocketed the rest, handed the five-franc note to Starwick, and said cheerfully—
“It’s all right! You two boys take this and buy yourselves some breakfast to sober up on. Happy New Year!”—and with a friendly farewell wave of the hand, drove off.
They had delicious morning crescent rolls, fresh-baked and crusty, and thick rich chocolate, at a little bakery in the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, next to Starwick’s quarters. He was living in a studio, loaned to him, he said, by “two friends,” whom he did not name, and who were “out of town for the holidays.”
The studio was one of a row of similar buildings all fronting on a little enclosed alley-way. One entered from a street through a gate set in the wall: one rang a bell, and presently la concierge pressed a button which released the door. Inside, it was very quiet and still and grey with the grey morning light of New Year’s Day. And all the city was shut out. Then they entered Starwick’s studio: in the grey light a big room with a slanting roof of grey glazed glass emerged: around the walls were paintings, the limbs and fragments of unfinished sculptures, a few chairs and tables, and a couch bed. At the back there was a balcony, and steps ascending to it: here too there was a cot, and Starwick told Eugene he could sleep up there.
Both young men were groggy with weariness and the night’s debauch: in the cold grey light, life looked black and ugly; they were exhausted and ashamed. Starwick lay down upon the couch and went to sleep; Eugene
