"You know, I've got 'alf a mind to stay over tonight and go back tomorrow.
What d'you say to spending the evening together?"
"If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre tonight, I'll see you damned," said Philip.
"I suppose it wouldn't be quite the thing."
The answer was made so seriously that Philip was tickled.
"Besides it would be rotten for your nerves," he said gravely.
Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to London by the four o'clock train, and presently he took leave of Philip.
"Well, good-bye, old man," he said.
"I tell you what, I'll try and come over to Paris again one of these days and I'll look you up.
And then we won't 'alf go on the razzle."
Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped on a bus and crossed the river to see whether there were any pictures on view at Durand-Ruel's.
After that he strolled along the boulevard.
It was cold and wind-swept.
People hurried by wrapped up in their coats, shrunk together in an effort to keep out of the cold, and their faces were pinched and careworn.
It was icy underground in the cemetery at Montparnasse among all those white tombstones.
Philip felt lonely in the world and strangely homesick.
He wanted company.
At that hour Cronshaw would be working, and Clutton never welcomed visitors; Lawson was painting another portrait of Ruth Chalice and would not care to be disturbed.
He made up his mind to go and see Flanagan.
He found him painting, but delighted to throw up his work and talk.
The studio was comfortable, for the American had more money than most of them, and warm; Flanagan set about making tea.
Philip looked at the two heads that he was sending to the Salon.
"It's awful cheek my sending anything," said Flanagan, "but I don't care,
I'm going to send.
D'you think they're rotten?"
"Not so rotten as I should have expected," said Philip.
They showed in fact an astounding cleverness.
The difficulties had been avoided with skill, and there was a dash about the way in which the paint was put on which was surprising and even attractive.
Flanagan, without knowledge or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man who has spent a lifetime in the practice of the art.
"If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than thirty seconds you'd be a great master, Flanagan," smiled Philip.
These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one another with excessive flattery.
"We haven't got time in America to spend more than thirty seconds in looking at any picture," laughed the other.
Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person in the world, had a tenderness of heart which was unexpected and charming.
Whenever anyone was ill he installed himself as sick-nurse.
His gaiety was better than any medicine.
Like many of his countrymen he had not the English dread of sentimentality which keeps so tight a hold on emotion; and, finding nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an exuberant sympathy which was often grateful to his friends in distress.
He saw that Philip was depressed by what he had gone through and with unaffected kindliness set himself boisterously to cheer him up.
He exaggerated the Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly.
In due course they went out to dinner and afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan's favourite place of amusement.
By the end of the evening he was in his most extravagant humour.
He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from which he suffered was due much more to his own vivacity than to alcohol.
He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented.
They sat down at a table on the platform at the side, raised a little from the level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and drank a bock.
Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were dancing.
Philip watched the people.
Bullier was not the resort of fashion.
It was Thursday night and the place was crowded.
There were a number of students of the various faculties, but most of the men were clerks or assistants in shops; they wore their everyday clothes, ready-made tweeds or queer tail-coats, and their hats, for they had brought them in with them, and when they danced there was no place to put them but their heads.
Some of the women looked like servant-girls, and some were painted hussies, but for the most part they were shop-girls. They were poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of the river.
The hussies were got up to resemble the music-hall artiste or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes were heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet.