V.
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T took Clifford a month to entirely recover, although at the end of the first week he was pronounced convalescent by Elliott, who was an authority, and his convalescence was aided by the cordiality with which Rue Barreé acknowledged his solemn salutes. Forty times a day he blessed Rue Barrée for her refusal and thanked his lucky stars, and at the same time, oh wondrous heart of ours!—he suffered the tortures of the blighted.
Elliott was annoyed, partly by Clifford’s reticence, partly by the unexplainable thaw in the frigidity of Rue Barrée. At their frequent encounters, when she, tripping along the rue de Seine, with music-roll and big straw hat would pass Clifford and his familiars steering an easterly course to the Café Vachette, and at the respectful uncovering of the band, would color and smile at Clifford, Elliott’s slumbering suspicions awoke. But he never found out anything and finally gave it up as beyond his comprehension, merely qualifying Clifford as an idiot and reserving his opinion of Rue Barrée. And all this time Selby was jealous. At first he refused to acknowledge it to himself and cut the studio for a day in the country, but the woods and fields of course aggravated his case, and the brooks babbled of Rue Barrée and the mowers calling to each other across the meadow ended in a quavering “Rue Bar-rée-e!” That day spent
