Among the finest of Willy’s possessions was a Japanese figure carved in wood not more than a foot high, a woman selling oysters.  Each least detail was most precisely rendered.  It was the attempt of a more recent Japanese master to portray feminine beauty.  In this one rare instance he had succeeded, having produced one of those precious objects adapted to make thieves of their lovers.

Willy, who mingled in American sporting circles, had also found occasion to collect a few Indian curiosities.  He showed Frederick the feather adornment of an Apache chief, a wampum belt, Indian knives and bows and arrows.  He had made the acquaintance of Buffalo Bill, the famous hunter, and some Indian chief and cowboys in his troupe, men in whom natural instincts are combined with a Barnum and Bailey business sense, and real excellence with the actor’s vanity.  Willy’s especial friend, whom he had been very eager for Frederick to meet, was a well-known acrobat who had jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River.

“Willy,” said Frederick, “since you have so profitably employed your time in America, you won’t be going back to Europe empty-handed.”

“The devil!” replied Willy.  “What else is to be got out of this damned country?”

XXIII

The next morning Frederick went down alone to the train.  He had taken final leave of his friends the night before, telling them expressly not to let his departure interfere with their day’s routine.  After placing his luggage in a wire basket hanging over one of the red plush seats in a coach which was one of a train of six or seven similar coaches, long and elegantly built, he returned to the platform.  All of a sudden the whole little colony of artists appeared, with the master-sculptor at their head—­in corpore, as college students say.  Miss Burns, too, had come, like the rest of them, carrying three of those purplish-red, long-stemmed roses with deep green leaves which were not yet being grown in Europe.

“I feel like a prima donna,” Frederick said, really touched, as he took the roses from each.

The platform and the train were as quiet as a cemetery, as if there never were arrivals or departures between friends.  But here and there, the face of a traveller, aroused by the “temperamental” chatter of the Germans, peered from behind the window-panes of the train to look curiously upon the little rose procession.  Finally, without a signal, or a word from any official, the train started to move, as if by chance.

Soon the group of artists in the station receded.  There stood Bonifacius Ritter, dignified and elegant, waving his handkerchief.  There was Lobkowitz, friendly and serious, Willy Snyders the good-hearted, Franck the gypsy painter, and, last but not least, Miss Eva Burns.  Frederick felt that with this moment, an epoch of his life had come to a close.  He was conscious of what he owed these fellow-countrymen and kindred spirits for their warmth and hospitality, and of what he lost in losing them.  Nevertheless, after the strange way of man, he was in a state of joyous excitement because his future, in a real and in a metaphoric sense, had been set in motion.