s small statue, but
he would have passed unnoticed had a lady not come slowly down the steps
and seen him, stopped and looked at him, though he did not see her until
she had approached. He flamed scarlet, covered his statuette and wished
that the cobbles of the pavement would open and swallow him.

She was--he thought of it afterward a hundred times--a woman of singular
tact and an illumined sympathy, as well as a woman of exquisite
comprehension.

"Mr. Rainsford!" she exclaimed. "You have something to sell?" she added,
and simply, as though she spoke to an ordinary vendor, yet he saw that
as she spoke a lovely colour rose in her cheek under her veil, and he
found that he was not ashamed any more.

She put out her hand. It came from a mantle of velvet and a cuff of
costly fur--he couldn't have dreamt then how costly. He lifted his hat,
bareheaded in the cold, and laid the little figure in her hand.

"How perfectly charming!" she murmured, holding it. And the dryad-like
figure, with its slender arms above its head and the faun-like,
brilliant little face, seemed perfection to her. She said so. "What a
perfect thing! Of course, you have the clay original?"

Fairfax could not speak. The sight of this woman so worldly, elegant,
sumptuous, at the first praise of his little statue, he realized that he
was selling it, and it struck him as a crime--his creation, his vision,
hawking it as a fish-wife might hawk crabs in the public street!

He felt a great humiliation and could have wept--indeed, tears did
spring to his eyes and the cold dried them.

Two "sergents de ville" came up to them.

"Pardon, Monsieur," asked one of them, "have you a license?"

Fairfax started, but the lady holding the little statue turned quickly
to the officials--

"A license? _Pourquoi faire, mes amis?_"

"It is against the rules to sell anything in the streets of Paris
without a license," said the policeman.

"Well," she exclaimed, "my friend has just made me a gift. This
gentleman is a friend of mine for whom I am waiting to take me to my
carriage. Allez vous en," she smiled at them, "I will excuse you, and so
will Monsieur."

She was so perfectly mistress of the situation that he had nothing to do
but leave himself in her hands.

"You will let me take you home," she said, "in whatever direction you
are going," and he followed her to her little carriage, waiting before
the curb.

She got in, gave the address of his studio to her co