He took me about after luncheon and I met a lot of very corking old ducks and some very eminent and delightful younger ducks, and everybody was terribly nice, and the president of the Academy, who is startlingly young and amiable, said that Guy Wilton had spoken about me, and that it was customary that when anybody was proposed for membership, a man of his own profession should do it.

“And I looked over the club list and saw Billy Van Siclen’s name, and now what do you think!  Billy has proposed me, Austin, the marine painter, has seconded me, and no end of men have written in my behalf—­professors, army men, navy men, business friends of father’s, architects, writers—­and I’m terribly excited over it, although my excitement has plenty of time to cool because it’s a fearfully conservative club and a man has to wait years, anyway.

“This is the very great honour, dear, for it is one even to be
proposed for the Pyramid.  I know you will be happy over it.

“D.”

The weather became hotter toward the beginning of September; his studio was almost unendurable, nor was the house very much better.

To eat was an effort; to sleep a martyrdom.  Night after night he rose from his hot pillows to stand and listen outside his father’s door; but the old endure heat better than the young, and very often his father was asleep in the stifling darkness which made sleep for him impossible.

The usual New York thunder-storms rolled up over Staten Island, covered the southwest with inky gloom, veined the horizon with lightning, then burst in spectacular fury over the panting city, drenched it to its steel foundations, and passed on rumbling up the Hudson, leaving scarcely any relief behind it.

In one of these sudden thunder-storms he took refuge in a rather modest and retired restaurant just off Fifth Avenue; and it being the luncheon hour he made a convenience of necessity and looked about for a table, and discovered Rosalie Dysart and Delancy Grandcourt en tete-a-tete over their peach and grapefruit salad.

There was no reason why they should not have been there; no reason why he should have hesitated to speak to them.  But he did hesitate—­in fact, was retiring by the way he came, when Rosalie glanced around with that instinct which divines a familiar presence, gave him a startled look, coloured promptly to her temples, and recovered her equanimity with a smile and a sign for him to join them.  So he shook hands, but remained standing.

“We ran into town in the racer this morning,” she explained.  “Delancy had something on down-town and I wanted to look over some cross-saddles they made for me at Thompson’s.  Do be amiable and help us eat our salad.  What a ghastly place town is in September!  It’s bad enough in the country this year; all the men wear long faces and mutter dreadful prophecies.  Can you tell me, Duane, what all this doleful talk is about?”