Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/217

 He hoped that the money would arrive before the Ruggles. He wanted to spend it all on them.

Beaulieu had sent the best of Edward's twohour sketches to an art dealer and several of them had been sold for small sums of money. To Edward the future looked very bright. If the Ruggles encouraged him he would try to scrape together enough money to go to Rome with them. Beaulieu had fired his imagination with descriptions of spring in the old Roman forum—the heavenly color of the sunshine and of the old marbles, the smell of the acacias, the jasmine and the violets.

Alice herself began to haunt his dreams. And it made him remorseful to think how little he had really missed her.

"Edward," said Madame Beaulieu reproachfully, "you should not show any other woman how impatient you are. It isn't polite."

"But they are my oldest friends!" he exclaimed. "And they have always been so charming to me."

"They!" mocked Madame.

She was becoming the victim of nervous, irritable moods. Sometimes she uttered philosophies so reckless and heartless that Beaulieu looked at her with pained amazement. Once or twice he reproved her, very sharply—for him.

And it seemed to Edward that these two dear