“Yes, that is the place,” she was thinking.  “I can smell the carpets now, and the dog,—­what was his name?  That grubby bathroom at the end of the hall, and that dreadful Hedger—­still, there was something about him, you know—­” She glanced up and blinked against the sun.  From somewhere in the crowded quarter south of the Square a flock of pigeons rose, wheeling quickly upward into the brilliant blue sky.  She threw back her head, pressed her muff closer to her chin, and watched them with a smile of amazement and delight.  So they still rose, out of all that dirt and noise and squalor, fleet and silvery, just as they used to rise that summer when she was twenty and went up in a balloon on Coney Island!

Alphonse opened the door and tucked her robes about her.  All the way down town her mind wandered from Cerro de Pasco, and she kept smiling and looking up at the sky.

When she had finished her business with the broker, she asked him to look in the telephone book for the address of M. Gaston Jules, the picture dealer, and slipped the paper on which he wrote it into her glove.  It was five o’clock when she reached the French Galleries, as they were called.  On entering she gave the attendant her card, asking him to take it to M. Jules.  The dealer appeared very promptly and begged her to come into his private office, where he pushed a great chair toward his desk for her and signalled his secretary to leave the room.

“How good your lighting is in here,” she observed, glancing about.  “I met you at Simon’s studio, didn’t I?  Oh, no!  I never forget anybody who interests me.”  She threw her muff on his writing table and sank into the deep chair.  “I have come to you for some information that’s not in my line.  Do you know anything about an American painter named Hedger?”

He took the seat opposite her.  “Don Hedger?  But, certainly!  There are some very interesting things of his in an exhibition at V——­’s.  If you would care to—­”

She held up her hand.  “No, no.  I’ve no time to go to exhibitions.  Is he a man of any importance?”

“Certainly.  He is one of the first men among the moderns.  That is to say, among the very moderns.  He is always coming up with something different.  He often exhibits in Paris, you must have seen—­”

“No, I tell you I don’t go to exhibitions.  Has he had great success?  That is what I want to know.”

M. Jules pulled at his short grey moustache.  “But, Madame, there are many kinds of success,” he began cautiously.

Madame gave a dry laugh.  “Yes, so he used to say.  We once quarrelled on that issue.  And how would you define his particular kind?”

M. Jules grew thoughtful.  “He is a great name with all the young men, and he is decidedly an influence in art.  But one can’t definitely place a man who is original, erratic, and who is changing all the time.”

She cut him short.  “Is he much talked about at home?  In Paris, I mean?  Thanks.  That’s all I want to know.”  She rose and began buttoning her coat.  “One doesn’t like to have been an utter fool, even at twenty.”