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170 unpleasantly jeered, "Haven't I met you somewhere before! Ye Gods!"

Only half conscious of his meaning, the other continued,

"No, it's not that, it is only that beauty"

"I know what you mean," the painter replied, taking the explanation out of his mouth, "it's only that that elusive thing is so eternal, so right, that when you meet up with it in any form, you'd swear you'd known it—or her (indicating the picture) always, and you have, anyway, in your dreams."

But the Legionnaire was examining the background with its masts, and cordage, and wash of blue water. "There is not so much colour, but it is very like the Breton coast. But perhaps it is only because I am homesick."

"Yep, quaint place—called Salthaven," the painter said between puffs.

"Salthaven—in what department, mon ami!"

"Department! Oh, I see—in what state—Massachusetts—" then he looked up at him inquiringly. "You're not thinking of trekking there, you mad Gaul, are you?"

"I tire of your city, fren' Tony, too much fever"

"And that from you!"

"It is a different sort of fever. Our kind is that of the sea, of the winds, and is governed by some law of Nature. There is peace even in the unrest, the wandering. But here in your nervous city, it is the spasm of the—what is your happy idiom—the capon decapitated? And, perhaps, I am homesick, though a man might travel far even for a pair of eyes he had never seen away from the canvas. I did once,