difficult pictures in the
Louvre, 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 would go."

Newman looked at the young girl in some perplexity. In spite of the
ridiculous blunder of which he stood convicted, he was very far from
being a simpleton, and he had a lively suspicion that Mademoiselle
Noemie's sudden frankness was not essentially more honest than her
leaving him in error would have been. She was playing a game; she
was not simply taking pity on his aesthetic verdancy. What was it she
expected to win? The stakes were high and the risk was great; the prize
therefore must have been commensurate. But even granting that the prize
might be great, Newman could not resist a movement of admiration for his
companion's intrepidity. She was throwing away with one hand, whatever
she might intend to do with the other, a very handsome sum of money.

"Are you joking," he said, "or are you serious?"

"Oh, serious!" cried Mademoiselle Noemie, but with her extraordinary
smile.

"I know very little about pictures or how they are painted. If you can't
do all that, of course you can't. Do what you can, then."

"It will be very bad," said Mademoiselle Noemie.

"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "if you are determined it shall be bad, of
course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?"

"I can do nothing else; I have no real talent."

"You are deceiving your father, then."

The young girl hesitated a moment. "He knows very well!"

"No," Newman declared; "I am sure he believes in you."

"He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want
to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place
to come to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp
room, on a court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter."

"Of course it is much more amusing," said Newman. "But for a poor girl
isn't it rather an expensive amusement?"

"Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that," said Mademoiselle
Noemie. "But rather than earn my living as some girls do--toiling with
a needle, in little black holes, out of the world--I would throw myself
into the Seine."

"There is no need of that," Newman answered; "your father told you my
offer?"

"Your offer?"

"He wants you to marry, and I told him I would give you a chance to earn
your dot."

"He told me all about it, and you see the account I make of