Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/271

 a very successful painter—and soon. Everybody said so. And it seemed a pity that he should have to have anything on his mind but the painting. In his day-dreams he pictured to himself a summer place with a fine big studio, outside of Paris, and a winter place—well, perhaps in Spain. He could earn enough money to make them very comfortable, and Anne would administer the money and cause the servants to work and the house and garden to be full of flowers. In time she would become so sure of Edward's single-hearted love and devotion that she would stop all her tempers and jealousies. He would paint her charming rosy body hundreds of times. All they would have to do would be to live happily and work happily and the world would be at their feet.

Meanwhile Edward's illustrations had impressed themselves upon certain editors in the United States, and he had so many orders that the execution of them interfered with his painting. He did not wish to be an illustrator; but it was wonderfully pleasant to earn so much money so easily and to have a growing bank account. And it was good training—doing things that you didn't especially want to do just as well as you could possibly do them.

One day he read in a stray copy of the Paris Herald that the ship Albacore was two weeks over-