“It is a private affair of Maurice’s,”
stammered the young actor.
“I see, thank you.”
After lunch the travellers set out for the Museum.
Maurice was surprised and delighted by the instinct
that guided his cousin towards the best that was in
the pictures. He explained to her in the language
affected by painters the reason for certain unreal
shadows in a certain picture, and the necessity for
them, the tact a painter must use in managing his
light, the difficulty of foreshortening. He told
her the well-known anecdote of Delacroix replying to
the professor who objected that he had put a full
face eye in a profile, “But, my dear master,
I have tried everything and that is the only eye that
gives the profile its proper value.” And
the professor of the great painter-to-be, after several
sketches on the transparent paper over his pupil’s
canvas, said to him, “You are entirely right.
Keep that full face eye.”
They left the Museum, animated by different feelings.
The more that Maurice discovered his cousin’s
noble qualities, the delicacy of her feelings, the
strength of her loyalty, the more he felt of protective
affection for this child who was so pure, so free,
and who had made her entry so bravely into the whirlpool
where things are generally turbulent, and most brutal
in the brutal side of Parisian life. The admiration
of his twenty years, for Esperance’s alluring
beauty, was purified into a friendship which he felt
growing deeper and stronger. As to Jean Perliez,
he had become more and more resigned that his love
should remain forever in the shade, unlimited devotion
for all time, all his being offered in sacrifice to
the frail idol, who went her way star-gazing, unsuspecting
all the time that she was trampling upon hearts under
her foot.
M. and Madame Darbois had received the telegram announcing
the return of their daughter, and were at the station
to meet her. Esperance saw them and would have
jumped out before the train had fully slopped.
Maurice held her just in time.
“No foolishness there, little cousin. Your
bodyguards must return you intact to your family’s
four arms. One more moment of patience. What
a hurry you are in to be rid of us.”
She held out her little hands to the two young men.
“Oh, naughty Maurice! You know very well
that I shall never forget these three days we have
passed together, when you have been so good to me and
taught me so very much.”
Maurice kissed her boldly; Jean put his lips very
respectfully to the warm, soft little hand.
The train stopped and the Darbois family were in an
instant reunited. Mlle. Frahender declined
escort to her convent. Francois Darbois installed
her in a landau, and after he had thanked her heartily
for her kindness to his daughter, gave the address
to the coachman, who drove away with the old lady
holding her inevitable little package on her lap,
and steadying her old-fashioned little attache case
on the seat opposite.
