fear of the large, rain-laden clouds stretching out gray hands after them. The shadows deepened in the room, and the silence seemed to press the people closer together. Under the dead weight of the stillness, the baron clearly noted that the mother’s conversation with her son became still more constrained and artificial and would soon, he was sure, cease altogether.

He resolved upon an experiment. He rose and went to the door slowly, looking past the woman at the prospect outside. At the door he gave a quick turn, as if he had forgotten something, and caught her looking at him with keen interest. That titillated him.

He waited in the hall. Presently she appeared, holding the boy’s hand and paused for a while to look through some magazines and show the child a few pictures. The baron walked up to the table with a casual air, pretending to hunt for a periodical. His real intention was to probe deeper below the moist sheen of her eyes and perhaps even begin a conversation.

The woman instantly turned away and tapped the boy’s shoulder.

“Viens, Edgar. Au lit.”

She rustled past the baron. He followed her with his eyes, somewhat disappointed. He had counted upon making the acquaintance that very evening. Her brusque manner was disconcerting. However, there was a fascination in her resistance, and the very uncertainty added zest to the chase. At all events he had found a partner, and the play could begin.

CHAPTER II

QUICK FRIENDSHIP

THE next morning, on entering the hall, the baron saw the son of the beautiful Unknown engaged in an eager conversation with the two elevator boys, to whom he was showing pictures in a book by Du Chaillu. His mother was not with him, probably not having come down from her room yet.

The baron took his first good look at the boy. He seemed to be a shy, undeveloped, nervous little fellow, about twelve years old. His movements were jerky, his eyes dark and restless, and he made the impression, so often produced by children of his age, of being scared, as if he had just been roused out of sleep and placed in strange surroundings. His face was not unbeautiful, but still quite undecided. The struggle between childhood and young manhood seemed just about to be setting in. Everything in him so far was like dough that has been kneaded but not formed into a loaf. Nothing was expressed in clean lines, everything was blurred and unsettled. He was at that hobbledehoy age when clothes do not fit, and sleeves and trousers hang slouchily, and there is no vanity to prompt care of one’s appearance.

The child made a rather pitiful impression as he wandered about the hotel aimlessly. He got in everybody’s way. He would plague the porter with questions and then be shoved aside, for he would stand in the doorway and obstruct the passage. Apparently there were no other children for him to play with, and in his child’s need for prattle he would try to attach himself to one or other of the hotel attendants. When they had time they would answer him, but the instant an adult came along they would stop talking and refuse to pay any more attention to him.

It interested the baron to watch the child, and he looked on smiling as the unhappy little creature inspected everything and everybody curiously, while he himself was universally avoided as a nuisance. Once the baron intercepted one of his curious looks. His black eyes instantly fell, when he saw himself observed, and hid behind lowered lids. The baron was amused. The boy actually began to interest him, and it flashed into his mind that he might be made to serve as the speediest means for bringing him and his mother together. He could overcome his shyness, since it proceeded from nothing but fear. At any rate, it was worth the trial. So when Edgar strolled out of the door to pet, in his child’s need of tenderness, the pinkish nostrils of one of the ’bus horses, the baron followed him.

Edgar was certainly unlucky. The driver chased him away rather roughly. Insulted and bored, he stood about aimlessly again, with a vacant, rather melancholy expression in his eyes. The baron now addressed him.

“Well, young man, how do you like it here?” He attempted a tone of jovial ease.

The child turned fairly purple and looked up in actual alarm, drawing his arms close to his body and twisting and turning in embarrassment. For the first time in his life a stranger was the one to address him and not he the stranger.

“Oh,” he managed to stammer out, choking over the last words, “thank you. I—I like it.”

“You do? I’m surprised,” the baron laughed. “It’s a dull place, especially for a young man like you. What do you do with yourself all day long?”

Edgar was still too confused to give a ready answer. Could it be true that this stranger, this elegant gentleman, was trying to pick up a conversation with him—with him, whom nobody had ever before cared a rap about? It made him both shy and proud. He pulled himself together with difficulty.

“I read, and we do a lot of walking. Sometimes we go out driving, mother and I. I am here to get well. I was sick. I must be out in the sunshine a lot, the doctor said.”

Edgar spoke the last with greater assurance. Children are always proud of their ailments. The danger they are in makes them more important, they know, in the eyes of their elders.

“Yes, the sun is good for you. It will tan your cheeks. But you oughtn’t to be standing round the whole day long. A fellow like you ought to be on the go, running, jumping, playing, full of spirits, and up to mischief, too. It strikes me you are too good. With that big fat book under your arm you look as though you were always poking in the house. By jingo, when I think of the kind of fellow I was at your age, I used to raise the devil, and every evening I came home with torn knickerbockers. Don’t be so good, whatever you are.”

Edgar could not help smiling, and the consciousness of his own smile removed his fear. Now he was anxious to say something in reply, but it seemed self-assertive and impudent to answer this affable stranger, who spoke to him in such a friendly way. He never had been forward and was easily abashed, so that now he was in the greatest embarrassment from sheer happiness and shame. He would have liked to continue the conversation, but nothing occurred to him. Luckily the great yellow St. Bernard belonging to the hotel came up and sniffed at both of them and allowed himself to be petted.

“Do you like dogs?” asked the baron.

“Oh, very much. Grandma has one in her villa at Bains. When we stop there he stays with me the whole time. But that’s only in the summer when we go visiting.”

“We have a lot of dogs at home on our estate, a full two dozen, I believe. If you behave yourself here I’ll make you a present of one, brown with white ears, a pup still. Would you like to have it?”

The child turned scarlet with joy.

“I should say so.”

The words fairly burst from his lips in an access of eagerness. Then he caught himself up and stammered in distress and as if frightened:

“But mother won’t allow me to have a dog. She says she won’t keep a dog in the house. It’s too much of a nuisance.”

The baron smiled. The conversation had at last come round to the mother.

“Is your mother so strict?"

The child pondered and looked up for an instant as if to find out whether the stranger was to be trusted on such slight acquaintance.

“No,” he finally answered cautiously, “she’s not strict, and since I’ve been sick she lets me do anything I want. Maybe she’ll even let me keep a dog.”

“Shall I ask her?”

“Oh, yes, please do,” Edgar cried delightedly. “If you