took Frances over to Richetti's,
and he was ever so pleasant and courteous to her, and most sympathetic.
I left her with him, fearing that my presence might distract her
attention from more important matters, and went to a tailor to order a
suit of clothes. It gratified me considerably to feel that, for the time
being, there would be no sinful extravagance in eschewing the
ready-made. There is indeed a great comfort in the inkling that one is
beginning to get along in the world. After this I had my hair cut, and
returned, exuding bay rum, to Richetti's studio.

Frances was waiting for me. The _maestro_ was already engaged with
another pupil, and we went out to find seats on an open car.

"He says he thinks it will be all right," she told me, eagerly. "The
tone is there and the volume. All I need is exercise, much judicious
exercise. He is the first teacher I ever met who told me that my
breathing was all right. They always want you to follow some entirely
new method of their own. He will give me three lessons a week, in the
morning. That will be enough for the present. At first, I must only
practise an hour a day. And so I can go back to Madame Felicie, because
she will be very glad to have me every afternoon and three mornings a
week and so I can keep on making a little money and I won't have to
borrow so much from you. Isn't it splendid?"

"I wish you would give up the shop," I told her.

But she shook her head, obstinately, and, of course, she had to have her
own way. That evening we went to Camus, and I doubt whether the place
ever saw three happier people. Frieda beamed all over and gorged herself
on mussels _a la mariniere_. She had just finished a portrait that
pleased her greatly, and was about to take up a nymph and faun she had
long projected.

"I don't suppose I would do for the nymph?" asked Frances.

"You a nymph! I want some slender wisp of a child just changing into
womanhood, my dear. You are the completed article, the flower opened to
its full beauty. If I ever paint you, it will have to be as some goddess
that has descended to the earth to mother a child of man."

"And I presume that as a faun I should hardly be a success," I ventured.

"What an idea! Frances, think of our dear old Dave prancing on a pair of
goat's legs and playing pipes of Pan."

They laughed merrily over the farcical vision thus evoked, and, of
course, I joined in the merriment. We remained for some time, watching
the danc