After lunch Hedger strolled about the Square for the dog’s health and watched the stages pull out;—­that was almost the very last summer of the old horse stages on Fifth Avenue.  The fountain had but lately begun operations for the season and was throwing up a mist of rainbow water which now and then blew south and sprayed a bunch of Italian babies that were being supported on the outer rim by older, very little older, brothers and sisters.  Plump robins were hopping about on the soil; the grass was newly cut and blindingly green.  Looking up the Avenue through the Arch, one could see the young poplars with their bright, sticky leaves, and the Brevoort glistening in its spring coat of paint, and shining horses and carriages,—­occasionally an automobile, misshapen and sullen, like an ugly threat in a stream of things that were bright and beautiful and alive.

While Caesar and his master were standing by the fountain, a girl approached them, crossing the Square.  Hedger noticed her because she wore a lavender cloth suit and carried in her arms a big bunch of fresh lilacs.  He saw that she was young and handsome,—­beautiful, in fact, with a splendid figure and good action.  She, too, paused by the fountain and looked back through the Arch up the Avenue.  She smiled rather patronizingly as she looked, and at the same time seemed delighted.  Her slowly curving upper lip and half-closed eyes seemed to say:  “You’re gay, you’re exciting, you are quite the right sort of thing; but you’re none too fine for me!”

In the moment she tarried, Caesar stealthily approached her and sniffed at the hem of her lavender skirt, then, when she went south like an arrow, he ran back to his master and lifted a face full of emotion and alarm, his lower lip twitching under his sharp white teeth and his hazel eyes pointed with a very definite discovery.  He stood thus, motionless, while Hedger watched the lavender girl go up the steps and through the door of the house in which he lived.

“You’re right, my boy, it’s she!  She might be worse looking, you know.”

When they mounted to the studio, the new lodger’s door, at the back of the hall, was a little ajar, and Hedger caught the warm perfume of lilacs just brought in out of the sun.  He was used to the musty smell of the old hall carpet. (The nurse-lessee had once knocked at his studio door and complained that Caesar must be somewhat responsible for the particular flavour of that mustiness, and Hedger had never spoken to her since.) He was used to the old smell, and he preferred it to that of the lilacs, and so did his companion, whose nose was so much more discriminating.  Hedger shut his door vehemently, and fell to work.