while patiently adding stitch after stitch to the
long strip of her crochet-work, was often much amused by the dialogues
between sitter and painter, pricked up her ears to hear what a Frenchman
would say to what was evidently intended to provoke a compliment.

"On the contrary, I shall miss you very much," said Marien, quite simply;
"I have grown accustomed to see you here. You have become one of the
familiar objects of my studio. Your absence will create a void."

"About as much as if this or that were gone," said Jacqueline, in a hurt
tone, pointing first to a Japanese bronze and then to an Etruscan vase;
"with only this difference, that you care least for the living object."

"You are bitter, Mademoiselle."

"Because you make me such provoking answers, Monsieur. My feeling is
different," she went on impetuously, "I could pass my whole life watching
you paint."

"You would get tired of it probably in the long run."

"Never!" she cried, blushing a deep red.

"And you would have to put up with my pipe--that big pipe yonder--a
horror."

"I should like it," she cried, with conviction.

"But you would not like my bad temper. If you knew how ill I can behave
sometimes! I can scold, I can become unbearable, when this, for example,"
here he pointed with his mahlstick to the Savonarola, "does not please
me."

"But it is beautiful--so beautiful!"

"It is detestable. I shall have to go back some day and renew my
impressions of Florence--see once more the Piazze of the Signora and San
Marco--and then I shall begin my picture all over again. Let us go
together--will you?"

"Oh!" she cried, fervently, "think of seeing Italy!--and with you!"

"It might not be so great a pleasure as you think. Nothing is such a bore
as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my 'idee fixe'
is my picture--my great Dominican. He has taken complete possession of
me--he overshadows me. I can think of nothing but him."

"Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose," said Jacqueline, softly,
"for I share your time with him."

"I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth
century," replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. "Ouf!--There! it is done
at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better or for
worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty--you poor little thing!"

She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission. She stood perfectly
still in the middle of the studio.

"