# The American (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907)/Chapter 4

IV
Early one morning, before he was dressed, a little old man was ushered into his apartment, followed by a youth in a blouse who carried a picture in a shining frame. Newman, among the distractions of Paris, had forgotten M. Nioche and his accomplished daughter; but this was an effective reminder.
"I was afraid you had given me up, sir," M. Nioche confessed after many apologies and salutations. "We have made you wait so many days. You accused us perhaps of a want of respectability, of bad faith, what do I know? But behold me at last! And behold also the pretty 'Madonna.' Place it on a chair, my friend, in a good light, so that monsieur may admire it." And M. Nioche, addressing his companion, helped him to dispose the work of art.
It had been endued with a layer of varnish an inch thick, and its frame, of an elaborate pattern, was at least a foot wide. It glittered and twinkled in the morning light and looked to Newman's eyes wonderfully splendid and precious. He thought of it as a very happy purchase and felt rich in his acquisition. He stood taking it in complacently while he proceeded with his dressing, and M. Nioche, who had dismissed his own attendant, hovered near, smiling and rubbing his hands.
"It has wonderful finesse," he critically pronounced. "And here and there are marvellous ​touches; you probably perceive them, sir. It attracted great attention on the Boulevard as we came along. And then a gradation of tones! That's what it is really to know how to paint. I don't say it because I'm her father, sir; but as one man of taste addressing another I can't help observing that you've acquired an object of price. It's hard to produce such things and to have to part with them. If our means only allowed us the luxury of keeping it! I in fact may say, sir"—and M. Nioche showed a feebly insinuating gaiety—"I really may say that I envy you your privilege. You see," he added in a moment, "we've taken the liberty of offering you a frame. It increases by a trifle the value of the work and it will save you the annoyance—so great for a person of your delicacy—of going about to bargain at the shops."
The language spoken by M. Nioche was a singular compound, which may not here be reproduced in its integrity. He had apparently once possessed a certain knowledge of English, and his accent was oddly tinged with old cockneyisms and vulgarisms, things quaint and familiar. But his learning had grown rusty with disuse and his vocabulary was defective and capricious. He had repaired it with large patches of French, with words anglicised by a process of his own, with native idioms literally translated. The result, in the form in which he in all humility presented it, would be scarcely comprehensible to the reader, so that I have ventured to attempt for it some approximate notation. Newman only half followed, but he was always amused, and the old man's decent ​forlornness appealed to his democratic instincts. The assumption of any inevitability in the depressed state always irritated his strong good-nature—it was almost the only thing that did so; and he felt the impulse to pass over it the dipped sponge of his own prosperity. Mademoiselle Noémie's parent, however, had apparently on this occasion been vigorously indoctrinated and showed a certain tremulous eagerness to cultivate unexpected opportunities.
"How much do I owe you then with the frame?" Newman asked.
"It will make in all three thousand francs," said the old man, smiling agreeably but folding his hands in instinctive suppliance.
"Can you give me a receipt?"
"I've brought one," said M. Nioche. "I took the liberty of drawing it up in case monsieur should happen to desire to discharge his debt." And he drew a paper from his pocket-book and presented it to his patron. The document, Newman judged, had the graces alike of penmanship and of style. He laid down the money, and M. Nioche dropped the napoleons one by one, solemnly and lovingly, into an old leathern purse.
"And how's your young lady?" he proceeded. "She made a great impression on me."
"An impression? monsieur is very good. Monsieur finds her —?" the old man quavered.
"I find her remarkably pretty."
"Alas, yes, she's very very pretty!"
"And what's the harm in her being so?"
M. Nioche fixed his eyes upon a spot in the ​carpet and shook his head. Then raising them to a more intimate intelligence: "Monsieur knows what Paris is. Dangerous to beauty when beauty has n't the sou."
"Ah, but that's not the case with your daughter. Is n't she rich now?"
"We're rich—yes, for six months. But if my daughter were less attractive I should sleep none the worse."
"You're afraid of the young men?"
"The young and the old!"
"She ought to get a husband."
"Ah, monsieur, one does n't get a husband for nothing. Her husband must take her as she is; I can't give her a liard. But the young men don't see with that eye."
"Oh," said Newman, "her talent's in itself a good outfit."
"Heuh, for that it needs first to be converted into specie!"—and M. Nioche slapped his purse tenderly before he stowed it away. "The miracle does n't take place every day."
"Well, your young men have very little grit; that's all I can say. They ought to pay for your daughter," Newman said, "and not ask money themselves."
"Those are very noble ideas, monsieur; but what will you have? They're not the ideas of this country. We want to know where we are when we marry."
"Well, how much will it take to show where your daughter is?" M. Nioche stared as if he wondered what might be coming next; but he promptly recovered himself, at a venture, and replied that he ​knew a very nice young man, employed by an insurance company, who would content himself with fifteen thousand francs. "Let your daughter paint half a dozen pictures for me," his benefactor then resumed, "and you can offer him his figure."
"Half a dozen pictures—his figure? Monsieur is n't speaking inconsiderately?"
"If she 'll make me six or eight copies in the Louvre as pretty as that 'Madonna', I 'll pay her the same price," said Newman.
Poor M. Nioche was speechless a moment, with amazement and gratitude; after which he seized Newman's hand and pressed it between his own ten fingers, gazing at him with watery eyes. "As pretty as that? They shall be a thousand times prettier—they shall be perfect little loves. Ah, if I only knew how to paint myself, sir, so that I might lend a hand! What can I do to thank you? Voyons!"—and he pressed his forehead while he tried to think of something.
"Oh, you've thanked me enough," said Newman.
"Ah, here it is, sir!" cried M. Nioche. "To express my gratitude I'll charge you nothing for our lessons!"
"Our lessons? I had quite forgotten them. Listening to your English," Newman laughed, "is really quite a lesson in French."
"Ah, I don't profess to teach English, certainly," said M. Nioche. "But for my own admirable tongue I'm still at your service."
"Since you're here then we'll begin. This is a very good hour, I'm going to have my coffee. Come ​every morning at half-past nine and have yours with me."
"Monsieur offers me my coffee also?" cried M. Nioche. "Truly my beaux jours are coming back."
"Allons, enfants de la patrie," said Newman; "let's begin! The coffee's ripping hot. How do you say that in French?"
Every day then, for the following three weeks, the minutely respectable figure of M. Nioche made its appearance, with a series of little enquiring and apologetic obeisances, among the aromatic fumes of Newman's morning beverage. I know not what progress he made; but, as he himself said, if he did n't learn a great deal, at least he did n't learn much harm. And it amused him; it gratified that irregularly sociable side of his nature which had always expressed itself in a relish for ungrammatical conversation and which often, even in his busy and preoccupied days, had made him sit on rail fences in the twilight of young Western towns and gossip scarce less than fraternally with humorous loafers and obscure fortune-seekers. He had notions, wherever he went, about talking with the natives; he had been assured, and his judgement approved the advice, that in travelling abroad it was an excellent thing to look into the life of the country. M. Nioche was very much of a native, and though his life might not be particularly worth looking into he was a palpable and smoothly-rounded unit in that "stiff" sum of civilisation and sophistication which offered our hero so much easy entertainment and proposed so many curious problems to his idle but active mind. ​Newman had a theory that his intelligence was lying down, but at least it could n't sleep. He was fond of statistics; he liked to know how things were done; it gratified him to learn what taxes were paid, what profits were gathered, what commercial habits prevailed, how the battle of life was fought. M. Nioche, as a reduced capitalist, was familiar with these considerations, and he formulated his information, which he was proud to be able to impart, in the neatest possible terms and with a pinch of snuff between finger and thumb. As a Frenchman—quite apart from Newman's napoleons—M. Nioche loved conversation, and even in his decay his urbanity had not declined. As a Frenchman too he could give a clear account of things, and—still as a Frenchman—when his knowledge was at fault he could supply its lapses with the most convenient and ingenious hypotheses. The small shrunken bourgeois rejoiced, ever, to have questions asked him, and he scraped together information by frugal processes, he took in his little greasy pocket-book notes of matters that might interest his munificent friend. He read old almanacks at the book-stalls on the quays and began to frequent another café, where more newspapers were taken and his post-prandial demi-tasse cost him a penny extra, and where he used to con the tattered sheets for curious anecdotes, freaks of nature and strange coincidences. He would relate with solemnity the next morning that a child of five years of age had lately died at Bordeaux, whose brain had been found to weigh sixty ounces—the brain of a Napoleon or a Washington! or that Madame X, ​charcutière in the Rue de Clichy, had found in the wadding of an old petticoat the sum of three hundred and sixty francs, which she had lost five years before. He pronounced his words with great pomp and circumstance, and Newman assured him that his way of dealing with the French tongue was very superior to the bewildering chatter that he heard in other mouths. Upon this M. Nioche's accent became more flutelike than ever; he offered to read extracts from Lamartine and protested that, although he did endeavour according to his feeble lights to cultivate authority of diction, monsieur, if he wanted the real thing, should go to the Comédie.
Newman took an interest in the wondrous French thrift and conceived a lively admiration for Parisian economies. His own economic genius was so entirely for operations on a larger scale, and, to move at his ease, he needed so imperatively the sense of great risks and great prizes, that he found diversion akin to the watching of ants in the spectacle of fortunes made by the aggregation of copper coins and in the minute subdivision of labour and profit. He questioned M. Nioche about his own manner of life and felt a friendly mixture of compassion and respect for the mystery of these humilities. The worthy man told him how he and his daughter had at one period supported existence comfortably on the sum of fifteen sous per diem; recently, having succeeded in dragging ashore the last floating fragments of the wreck of his fortune, his budget had been a trifle more ample. But they still had to butter their bread very thin, and M. Nioche intimated with a sigh that ​his young companion did n't bring to this task the zealous co-operation that might have been desired. "But what will you have? One is in the flower of youth, one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can't wear shabby gowns among the splendours of the Louvre."
"Yet she must earn what will pay for her clothes," Newman felt enlisted enough to suggest.
M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes. He would have liked to be able to say that his daughter's talents were appreciated and that her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights. He compromised, he declared that while it was obvious that Mademoiselle Noémie's reproductions of the old masters had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them, had kept purchasers at a respectful distance. "Poor little cherished one!" said M. Nioche with a sigh; "it's almost a pity that her work's so perfect! It would be in her interest to be a bit of an impostor."
"But if she has this spark of the flame," Newman benevolently reasoned, "why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of the other day?"
M. Nioche meditated; there was an inconsistency in his position; it made him particularly uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy the goose with the golden eggs—Newman's benevolent confidence—he felt a weary need to speak out ​all his trouble. "Ah, she has a spark of that flame, my dear sir, most assuredly. But, to tell you the truth, she has also more than a mere spark of another. She's a franche coquette if there ever was one. I'm sorry to say," he added in a moment, shaking his head with a world of accepted melancholy, "it was to come to her as straight as a letter in the post. Her poor mother had that sad vice."
"Why, you were n't happy with your wife?" Newman almost incredulously asked.
M. Nioche gave half a dozen little backward jerks of his head. "She was my heavy cross, monsieur!"
"She was n't very good?"
"She was good for some things and some people, but not for a poor man like me. She deceived me, under my nose, year after year. I was too stupid, and the temptation was too great. But I found her out at last. I've only been once in my life a man to be afraid of; I know it very well: it was in that hour! Nevertheless I don't like to think of it. I loved her—I can't tell you why nor how much. Oh, she was—if I must say so—bad."
"She's not living?"
"She's gone to her account."
"Her influence on your daughter then," said Newman encouragingly, "is not to be feared."
"She cared no more for her daughter than for the wind in the chimney. But Noémie has no more use for bad examples than for good. She's sufficient to herself. She's stronger than I."
"She does n't mind what you say?"
"There is n't much to mind, sir—I say so little. ​What's the use of my saying anything? It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tête. She's very clever, like her poor mother; she would waste no time about it. As a child—when I was happy, or supposed I was—she studied drawing and painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had the gift. I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry her little water-colours with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I remember how a lady once thought I was offering them for sale and that I took it very ill. We don't know what we may come to! Then came my dark days and my final rupture with Madame Nioche. Noémie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes. Some of our friends in the quartier pronounced the idea fantastic: they recommended her to try bonnet-making, to get a situation in a shop, or—if she was more ambitious—to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie. She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come and see her. The old lady liked her and made her an offer of her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noémie discovered that she passed her life in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew: the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs. She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas and a new ​dress, and went and set up her easel in the Louvre. There, in one place and another, she has passed the last two years; I can't say it has made us millionaires. But she tells me Rome was n't built in a day, that she's making great progress, that I must leave her to her own devices. The fact is, without prejudice to her 'gift', that she has no idea of burying herself alive. She likes to see the world and to be seen of the world. She says herself that she can't work in the dark. Her appearance itself holds up the lamp for others! Only I can't help worrying and trembling—I can't help wondering what may happen to her there all alone, day after day, amid that prowling of people from the ends of the earth. I can't be always at her side. I go with her in the morning, and I come to fetch her away, but she won't have me near her in the interval; she says I give on her nerves. As if it did n't give on mine to keep walking up and down outside! Ah, if anything were to happen to her!" cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his head again portentously.
"Oh, I guess she'll come out all right," his friend soothingly returned.
"I believe I should shoot her otherwise!" said the old man solemnly.
"Well, we'll marry her quick enough," insisted Newman-"since that's how you manage it; and I'll go and see her to-morrow at the Louvre and pick out the pictures she's to copy for me."
M. Nioche had brought a message from his daughter in acceptance of their patron's magnificent commission, the young lady declaring herself his most ​devoted servant, promising her most zealous endeavour and regretting that the proprieties forbade her coming to thank him in person. The morning after the conversation just narrated Newman reverted to his intention of meeting his young friend at the Louvre. M. Nioche appeared preoccupied and left his budget of anecdotes unopened; he took a great deal of snuff and sent certain oblique, appealing glances toward his stalwart pupil. At last, when taking his leave, he stood a moment, after he had polished his hat with his calico pocket-handkerchief, and fixed his small pale eyes strangely on that personage.
"Well, what's the matter?"
"Pardon the solicitude of a father's heart! You inspire me with boundless confidence, but I can't help making you an appeal. After all you're a man, and so fine a one; you're young and at liberty. Let me beseech you then to respect an innocence—!"
Newman had wondered what was coming, yet had already burst into mirth. He was on the point of pronouncing his own innocence the more exposed, but he contented himself with promising to treat the young lady with nothing less than veneration. He found her, awaiting him, seated on the great divan of the Salon Carré. She was not in the garb of labour, but wore her bonnet and gloves and carried her parasol in honour of the occasion. These articles had been selected with unerring taste, and a fresher, prettier image of youthful alertness and blooming discretion was not to be conceived. She made Newman a most respectful curtsey, she expressed her ​gratitude for his liberality in the neatest of little speeches. It annoyed him to have so charming a girl stand there thanking him, and it made him feel uncomfortable to think that this perfect young lady, with her excellent manners and her finished intonation, was literally in his pay. He assured her, in such French as he could muster, that the thing was not worth mentioning and that he regarded her services as a particular favour.
"Whenever you please then," she said, "we'll pass the review."
They walked slowly round the room and then into the others; they strolled about with high dignity for half an hour. His companion evidently relished her situation and had no desire to bring to a close her public interview with a patron of such striking type. Newman perceived that prosperity agreed with her and that the little firm-lipped, peremptory air with which she had addressed her father on the occasion of their former meeting had given place to the prettiest, easiest prattle.
"What sort of pictures have you in mind?" she asked. "Sacred or profane?"
"Oh, a few of each. But I want something bright and gay."
"Something gay? There's nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre. But we'll see what we can find. You speak French to-day like a charm. My father has done wonders."
"Oh, I'm a thankless subject," said Newman. "I'm too old to learn a language."
"Too old? Quelle folie!" she cried with a clear, ​shrill laugh. You're a very beau jeune homme. And how do you like my father?"
"He's a very nice old gentleman. He never laughs at my blunders."
"He's very comme il faut, dear papa," said Mademoiselle Noémie, "and as honest as the day. Oh, a probity that would take a prize! You could trust him with millions."
"Do you always mind what he says?" asked Newman.
"'Mind' it?"
"Do you do what he bids you."
The girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of colour in either cheek, and in her prompt French eye, too protrusive for perfect beauty, was a sharp spark of freedom. "Why do you ask me that?"
"Because I want to know."
"You think me a bad little girl?" And she gave a strange smile.
Newman looked at her a moment; he saw she was pretty, but he was not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche's solicitude for her innocence, and he laughed out again as his eyes met this odd quantity. Her face was a rare mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her clear, charming forehead her searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly, to make her father uneasy; but as regards her innocence Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm that she had never yet sacrificed it. She had simply never had any to lose; she had been ​looking at the wonderful world about her since she was ten years old, and he would have been a wise man who could tell her any secret of the town. In her long mornings at the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and Saint Johns; she had kept an eye upon the variously-embodied human nature in which the scene no less abounded, and she had formed her conclusions. In a degree, it seemed to Newman, M. Nioche might be at rest; if his daughter should assert her liberty in some unmistakeable way she would yet never publish her imprudence. Newman, with his long-drawn, leisurely smile and his articulation that suggested confidence in nothing but its motive, was always mentally taking his time; so he asked himself now what she was looking at him in that way for. He had an impression she would like him to confess that he did think her a wretch. "Oh no," he said at last; "it would be very impolite in me to judge you in any such way. I don't know you."
"But my father has complained to you."
"He says you're a free spirit."
"He shouldn't go about saying such things to gentlemen! But you don't believe it?"
"Well," said Newman conscientiously, "I don't believe he meant any harm by it."
She looked at him again, gave a shrug and a smile, and then pointed to a small Italian picture, a Marriage of Saint Catherine. "How should you like that?"
"It doesn't please me," he presently answered. "The young lady in the yellow dress is n't pretty enough."
​"Ah, you're a great connoisseur!" his companion sighed.
"In pictures? Oh no; I'm only picking up the rudiments of knowledge."
"In pretty women then?"
"In that I may be coming on, but I've ground to make up."
"What do you say to this?" the girl asked, indicating a superb Italian portrait of a lady. "I'll do it for you on a smaller scale."
"On a smaller scale? Why not as large as the original?"
She glanced at the glowing splendour of the Venetian masterpiece and gave a toss of her head. "I don't like that woman. She looks stupid."
"Well, she makes an impression on me," said Newman. "Decidedly I must have her, and as large as life. And just as shiningly stupid as she stands there."
The girl fixed her eyes on him again, and with her mocking smile: "It certainly ought to be easy for me to make her look stupid!" And then as he but opposed his vagueness she gave another shrug. "Seriously, you want that portrait—the golden hair, the purple satin, the pearl necklace, the two magnificent arms?"
"Everything—just as it is."
"Would nothing else do instead?"
"Oh, I want some other things, but I want that too."
She turned away a moment, walked to the other side of the hall and stood there looking vaguely ​about her. At last she came back. It must be charming to be able to order pictures at such a rate. Venetian portraits as large as life! You go at it en prince. And you're going to travel about Europe that way?"
"Yes, I intend to travel," said Newman.
"Ordering, buying, spending money?"
"Of course I shall spend a certain amount of money."
"You're very happy to have it. And you're perfectly free?"
"How do you mean, free?"
"You have nothing to embêter you—no father, no family, no wife, no fiancée?"
"Yes, I'm tolerably free."
"You're very very happy," said Mademoiselle Noémie gravely.
"Je le veux bien!" said Newman, proving that he had learned more French than he admitted.
"And how long shall you stay in Paris?" the girl went on.
"Only a few days more."
"Why do you go away?"
"It's getting hot, and I must go to Switzerland."
"To Switzerland? That's a fine country. I would give the clothes on my back to see it! Lakes and mountains, deep green valleys, ranz-des-vaches! Oh I congratulate you! Meanwhile I shall sit here through all the hot summer daubing at your pictures.
"Ah, take your time about it," Newman urged. "Do them at your convenience."
​They walked further and looked at a dozen other things. He pointed out what pleased him, and Mademoiselle Noémie generally criticised it and proposed something else. Then suddenly she diverged into the intimate. "What made you speak to me the other day in the Salon Carré?"
"I admired your picture."
"But you hesitated a long time."
"Oh, I do nothing foolish," he said.
"Yes, I saw you watching me. But I never supposed you were going to speak to me. I never dreamed I should be walking about here with you to-day. It's very remarkable."
"It's sufficiently natural," he calmly pleaded.
"Ah, I beg your pardon: not to me. 'Free spirit'—in other words horrid creature—as you think me, I have never walked about in public with a gentleman before. What was my father thinking of when he consented to our interview?"
"He was repenting of his unjust accusations," Newman returned.
Mademoiselle Noémie remained silent; at last she dropped into a seat. "Well then, for those five it's fixed," she presently said. "Five copies as brilliant and beautiful as I can make them. We've one more to choose. Should n't you like one of those great Rubenses—the Marriage of Marie de Médicis? Just look at it and see how handsome it is."
"Oh yes; I should like that," he allowed. "Finish off with that."
"Finish off with that—good!" she laughed. She sat a moment looking at him, then suddenly rose ​and stood before him with her arms expressively folded. "Ah ça, I don't understand you," she bravely broke out. "I don't understand how a man can be so ignorant."
"Oh, I'm ignorant certainly." And he put his hands in his pockets.
"It's too ridiculous! I don't know how to paint pour deux sous."
"You don't know how?"
"I paint like a cat; I can't draw a straight line. I never sold a picture until you bought that thing the other day." And as she offered this surprising information she continued to smile.
Newman met it with a grimace of his own. "Why do you make that statement?"
"Because it irritates me to see a clever man so bête. My copies are grotesque."
"And the one I possess—?"
"That one's the flower of the dreadful family."
"Well," said Newman, "I never outgrew a mistake but in my own time and in my own way."
She looked at him askance. "Your patience is very gentille; it's my duty to warn you before you go further. This commande of yours is impossible, you know. What do you take me for? It's work for ten strong men. You pick out the six most difficult pictures in the place, and you expect me to go to work as if I were sitting down to hem a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs. I wanted to see how far you'd go."
Newman considered her in some perplexity. In spite of the blunder of which he stood convicted he was very far from being a simpleton, and he had a ​lively suspicion that her burst of confidence was not essentially more honest than her original pretence. She was playing a great game; she was not simply taking pity on the bloom of his barbarism. What was it she expected to gain? The stakes were high and the risk not small; the prize therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting that the prize might be great Newman could scarce resist a movement of admiration for his young friend's intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand, whatever she might intend to do with the other, a substantial sum of money. "Are you joking or serious?"
"Oh, d 'un serieux!" she cried, but with her extraordinary smile.
"I know very little about pictures or how they're really painted. If you can't do all, why then do what you conveniently can."
"It will all be bad à faire pleurer," said Mademoiselle Noémie.
"Oh," Newman laughed, "if you want to swindle me of course you can. But why do you go on painting badly?"
"I can do nothing else; I've neither eye nor hand nor training. Above all I have n't patience."
"You're deceiving your father then."
The girl just hesitated. "He perfectly knows."
"No," Newman declared; "I'm sure he believes in you."
"He's afraid of me, poor dear. I go on painting badly, as you say, because it passes the time. I like being here; it's a place to come to every day; it's ​better than sitting in a little dark damp room on a court or than selling buttons and whalebones over a counter."
"Of course it's much more amusing," said Newman. "But for a poor girl is n't it rather an expensive amusement?"
"Oh, I'm very wrong; there's no doubt about that," she answered. "But rather than earn my living as some girls do—toiling with a needle in little black holes out of the world—I 'd throw myself into the Seine."
"There's no need of that," he presently observed. "Your father must have mentioned to you the reason of my offer?"
"The reason—?"
"He wants you to marry, and I told him I 'd give you a chance to earn your dot."
"He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of it! Why should you take such an interest in my marriage?"
"My interest was in your father. I hold to my engagement. Do what you can, and I'll buy what you do."
She stood some time in thought, her eyes on the ground. At last looking up, "What sort of a husband can you get for twelve thousand francs?" she asked.
"Your father tells me he knows some very good young men."
"Grocers and butchers and little maîtres de cafés? I won't marry at all if I can't marry more proprement than that."
​"I 'd advise you not to be too fastidious," said Newman. "That's all the advice I can give you."
"I'm vexed at what I've said!" cried his companion. "It has done me no good. But I could n't help it."
"What good did you expect it to do you?"
"I could n't help it, simply."
He looked at her a moment. "Well, your painting may be a fraud, but you're too honest for me all the same. I don't understand you. Good-bye!" And he put out his hand.
She made no response, she granted him no farewell. She turned away and seated herself sidewise on a bench, leaning her head on the back of her hand, which clasped the rail in front of the pictures. Newman stood near her another moment, then he turned on his heel and retreated. He had understood her better than he confessed; this singular scene was a practical commentary upon her father's description of her as a free spirit.