d Stidmann, "what are we to
think?"

"If you will make your Delilah a portrait of Valerie, my dear Count,"
said Crevel, who had risen for a moment from the card-table, and who
had heard what had been said, "I will give you a thousand crowns for
an example--yes, by the Powers! I will shell out to the tune of a
thousand crowns!"

"Shell out! What does that mean?" asked Beauvisage of Claude Vignon.

"Madame must do me the honor to sit for it then," said Steinbock to
Crevel. "Ask her--"

At this moment Valerie herself brought Steinbock a cup of tea. This
was more than a compliment, it was a favor. There is a complete
language in the manner in which a woman does this little civility; but
women are fully aware of the fact, and it is a curious thing to study
their movements, their manner, their look, tone, and accent when they
perform this apparently simple act of politeness.--From the question,
"Do you take tea?"--"Will you have some tea?"--"A cup of tea?" coldly
asked, and followed by instructions to the nymph of the urn to bring
it, to the eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table,
cup in hand, towards the pasha of her heart, presenting it
submissively, offering it in an insinuating voice, with a look full of
intoxicating promises, a physiologist could deduce the whole scale of
feminine emotion, from aversion or indifference to Phaedra's
declaration to Hippolytus. Women can make it, at will, contemptuous to
the verge of insult, or humble to the expression of Oriental
servility.

And Valerie was more than woman; she was the serpent made woman; she
crowned her diabolical work by going up to Steinbock, a cup of tea in
her hand.

"I will drink as many cups of tea as you will give me," said the
artist, murmuring in her ear as he rose, and touching her fingers with
his, "to have them given to me thus!"

"What were you saying about sitting?" said she, without betraying that
this declaration, so frantically desired, had gone straight to her
heart.

"Old Crevel promises me a thousand crowns for a copy of your group."

"He! a thousand crowns for a bronze group?"

"Yes--if you will sit for Delilah," said Steinbock.

"He will not be there to see, I hope!" replied she. "The group would
be worth more than all his fortune, for Delilah's costume is rather
un-dressy."

Just as Crevel loved to strike an attitude, every woman has a
victorious gesture, a studied movement, which she knows must win
admiration. Yo