Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/172

 their midst, he shrank from it. Better to seek out Casimir quietly and take counsel of him. The distance from his present self to the Grover Thanet who would be deferred to at international art shows seemed almost farther than he had courage to go.

His way of life during these last few days had also depleted his money. Bohemians, he had discovered, will drink up everything you set before them.

A new mood settled on him, a mood as gray and still and sombre as the October skies over the smutty roofs of his humble neighborhood. As the trees in the court had been shedding outgrown scraps of foliage, so had he been dropping his boyish extravagances; and just as the creamy walls across the court were less bewilderingly lacey, so his mental shadows bore witness to the simplification of his daily habits. On the other side of the house, when the laundress in the rue Truffaut began to appear in a brownish-red cloth blouse which had a suggestion of winter about it, he deserted the balcony to read indoors, On cold days he would build a fire in the grate of the grande pièce which was anything but grande and stretch before it with Mouche and a book. Sometimes Madame would come and sit near him to trim hats.

Hats were a rite with Mme. Choiseul. Three or four times a year she would sally forth to the Galeries Lafayette, spend an afternoon in the millinery department, and order a wide assortment of trimmings and a dozen bare hats on approval. For a week there