impossible to be more bewitching!" cried Stidmann.

"Oh! she is the most intelligent and desirable woman I have ever met,"
said Claude Vignon. "Such a combination of beauty and cleverness is so
rare."

"And if you who had the honor of being intimate with Camille Maupin can
pronounce such a verdict," replied 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," sai