A successful man, he had been romantically adored by many idle women and angled for by many an interested one.  At times he had lightly lent himself to those amiable French arrangements of good comradeship which end naturally and without bitterness, leaving both parties with a satisfied sense of having received very good measure.  He had never been able to deceive himself that he loved.  He had loved Denise, but there had been in his affection for her more of compassion than passion, as Denise herself had known.  She remained in his memory like a perfume.  That had been his one serious liaison.  But the woman he could really love with his fullest powers, and to whom he could give his best, had not yet appeared.

Mrs. Hemingway had been troubled by his celibacy.  She had persisted in her desire to have him marry young, his wife being some one of her girl friends.  She wished to see Peter set up an establishment, which would presently center around a nursery full of adorable babies who would bring with them that tender and innocent happiness young children alone are able to confer.  To dispel these pleasant day-dreams of hers, Peter had found it necessary to tell her of his American marriage.

Mrs. Hemingway was astonished, a little chagrined, but not hopeless.  He should bring his young wife to Paris.  To make her understand that marriage as it really was, to explain his own attitude toward it, Peter made a swift and frightfully accurate little sketch of Nancy Simms as she had appeared to him that memorable morning.

His friend was appalled.  It took Peter some time to explain his uncle to Mrs. Hemingway.  At the best, she thought, he had been insane.  Not even the fact that Peter was co-heir to the Champneys fortune consoled her for what she considered a block to his happiness, a blight upon his life.  The more she thought about that marriage, the more she disliked it; and as the time approached for Peter literally to sacrifice himself upon the altar, Mrs. Hemingway grew more and more perturbed, though she wasn’t so troubled about it as Emma Campbell was.  Emma’s terror of “dat gal” had grown with the years.  Neither of them ventured to question Peter, but Emma Campbell began to have frequent spells of “wrastlin’ wid de sperit,” and her long, lugubrious “speretuals” were dismal enough to set one’s teeth on edge.  She would howl piercingly: 

“Befo’ dis time anothuh yeah,
I ma-ay be gone,
Een some ole lone-some graveyahd,
O Lawd, ho-ow long?”

She had left the high Montmartre cottage and had come down to keep house for Peter, his being a very simple menage.  Oddly, the denizens of the Quartier didn’t faze her in the least.  She chuckled over them, an old negro woman’s sinful chuckle.  She made no slightest attempt to conquer the French language, which she didn’t in the least admire.  She learned the equivalents for a few phrases of her own,—­“I hongry,” “How much?” “Gimme dat,” and “Mistuh Peter gone out,” and on this slight foundation she managed to keep a fairly firm footing.  The frequenters of Peter’s studio were delighted with Emma Campbell; they recognized her artistic availability, and she and her black cat were borrowed liberally.