His luggage, of which, as usual, there was a good deal, was dropped at the Crillon, and they shot up the Champs Elysées as the summer dusk began to be pricked¹ by lamps.

 

“How jolly the old place smells!” George cried, breathing in the scent² of sun-warmed asphalt, of flowerbeds and freshly-watered dust. He seemed as much alive to such impressions as if his first word at the station had not been: “Well, this time I suppose we’re in for it.” In for it they might be; but meanwhile he meant to enjoy the scents³ and scenes of Paris as acutely and unconcernedly as ever.

 

Campton had hoped that he would pick out one of the humble⁴ cyclists’ restaurants near the Seine; but not he. “Madrid, is it?” he said gaily⁵, as the taxi turned into the Bois; and there they sat under the illuminated⁶ trees, in the general glitter and expensiveness, with the Tziganes playing down their talk, and all around them the painted faces that seemed to the father so old and obvious, and to the son, no doubt, so full of novelty and mystery.

 

The music made conversation difficult; but Campton did not care. It was enough to sit and watch the face 28in which, after each absence, he noted⁷ a new and richer vivacity⁸. He had often tried to make up his mind if his boy were handsome. Not that the father’s eye influenced the painter’s; but George’s young head, with its thick blond thatch⁹, the

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