have made our way.
Hemerlingue, once keeper of a regimental canteen. I, who have carried
sacks of wheat in the docks of Marseilles for my living. And the strokes
of luck by which our fortunes have been built up--as all fortunes,
moreover, in these times are built up. Go to the Bourse between three
and five. But, pardon, mademoiselle, see, through my absurd habit of
gesticulating when I speak, I have lost the pose. Come, is this right?"

"It is useless," said Felicia. A true daughter of an artist, of a genial
and dissolute artist, thoroughly in the romantic tradition, as was
Sebastien Ruys. She had never known her mother. She was the fruit of one
of those transient loves which used to enter suddenly into the bachelor
life of the sculptor like swallows into a dovecote of which the door is
always open, and who leave it again because no nest can be built there.

This time, the lady, ere she flew away, had left to the great artist,
then about forty years of age, a beautiful child whom he had brought
up, and who became the joy and the passion of his life. Until she
was thirteen, Felicia had lived in her father's house, introducing a
childish and tender note into that studio full of idlers, models, and
huge greyhounds lying at full length on the couches. There was a corner
reserved for her, for her attempts at sculpture, a whole miniature
equipment, a tripod, wax, etc., and old Ruys would cry to those who
entered:

"Don't go there. Don't move anything. That is the little one's corner."

So it came about that at ten years old she scarcely knew how to read and
could handle the boasting-tool with marvellous skill. Ruys would have
liked to keep always with him this child whom he never felt to be in the
way, a member of the great brotherhood from her earliest years. But
it was pitiful to see the little girl amid the free behaviour of the
frequenters of the house, the constant going and coming of the models,
the discussions of an art, so to speak, entirely physical, and even at
the noisy Sunday dinner-parties, sitting among five or six women, to all
of whom her father spoke familiarly. There were actresses, dancers or
singers, who, after dinner, would settle themselves down to smoke with
their elbows on the table absorbed in the indecent stories so keenly
relished by their host. Fortunately, childhood is protected by a
resisting candour, by an enamel over which all impurities glide. Felicia
became noisy, turbulent, ill-behaved,