“All of which is not very complimentary to the bride,” said Herkimer.

“Find me one like her,” cried Bennett.

“Ditto,” said Chatterton and Jacobus with enthusiasm.

“There is only one thing that worries me,” said Bennett, seriously.  “Isn’t there too much money?”

“Not for Rantoul.”

“He’s a rebel.”

“You’ll see; he’ll stir up the world with it.”

Herkimer himself had approved of the marriage in a whole-hearted way.  The childlike ways of Tina Glover had convinced him, and as he was concerned only with the future of his friend, he agreed with the rest that nothing luckier could have happened.

Three years passed, during which he received occasional letters from his old chum, not quite so spontaneous as he had expected, but filled with the wonder of the ancient worlds.  Then the intervals became longer, and longer, and finally no letters came.

He learned in a vague way that the Rantouls had settled in the East somewhere near New York, but he waited in vain for the news of the stir in the world of art that Rantoul’s first exhibitions should produce.

His friends who visited in America returned without news of Rantoul; there was a rumor that he had gone with his father-in-law into the organization of some new railroad or trust.  But even this report was vague, and as he could not understand what could have happened, it remained for a long time to him a mystery.  Then he forgot it.

Ten years after Rantoul’s marriage to little Tina Glover, Herkimer returned to America.  The last years had placed him in the foreground of the sculptors of the world.  He had that strangely excited consciousness that he was a figure in the public eye.  Reporters rushed to meet him on his arrival, societies organized dinners to him, magazines sought the details of his life’s struggle.  Withal, however, he felt a strange loneliness, and an aloofness from the clamoring world about him.  He remembered the old friendship in the starlit garret of the Rue de l’Ombre, and, learning Rantoul’s address, wrote him.  Three days later he received the following answer: 

    Dear Old Boy:

I’m delighted to find that you have remembered me in your fame.  Run up this Saturday for a week at least.  I’ll show you some fine scenery, and we’ll recall the days of the Cafe des Lilacs together.  My wife sends her greetings also.

    Clyde.

This letter made Herkimer wonder.  There was nothing on which he could lay his finger, and yet there was something that was not there.  With some misgivings he packed his bag and took the train, calling up again to his mind the picture of Rantoul, with his shabby trousers pulled up, decorating his ankles with lavender and black, roaring all the while with his rumbling laughter.