an interrogative glance toward his friend, resumed the “Gil Blas” and the discreet smiles.
The day was perfect. The sun hung over Notre Dame, setting the city in a glitter. The tender foliage of the chestnuts cast a shadow over the terrace and flecked the paths and walks with tracery so blue that Clifford might here have found encouragement for his violent “impressions” had he but looked; but as usual in this period of his career, his thoughts were anywhere except in his profession. Around about, the sparrows quarrelled and chattered their courtship songs, the big rosy pigeons sailed from tree to tree, the flies whirled in the sunbeams and the flowers exhaled a thousand perfumes which stirred Clifford with languorous wistfulness. Under this influence he spoke.
“Elliott, you are a true friend———”
“You make me ill,” replied the latter, folding his paper. “It’s just as I thought,—you are tagging after some new petticoat again. And,” he continued wrathfully, “if this is what you’ve kept me away from Julian’s for,—if it’s to fill me up with the perfections of some little idiot———”
“Not idiot,” remonstrated Clifford gently.
“See here,” cried Elliott, “have you the nerve to try to tell me that you are in love again?”
“Again?”
“Yes, again and again and again and—by George, have you?”
“This,” observed Clifford sadly, “is serious.”
For a moment Elliott would have laid hands on him, then he laughed from sheer helplessness. “Oh, go on, go on; let’s see, there’s
