might say that the evening left her sense of humor rather
sore. At that moment she was dallying with the temptation
to describe the whole scene in a letter to a valued friend
in Philadelphia, who would have appreciated it with mirth.
In the end she did not write. It would have been too
humiliating.




CHAPTER III.

"_Pas mal, parbleu!_" Lucien remarked, with pursed-out
lips, running his fingers through his shock of coarse
hair, and reflectively scratching the top of his big head
as he stepped closer to Nadie Palicsky's elbow, where
she stood at her easel in his crowded atelier. The girl
turned and looked keenly into his face, seeking his eyes,
which were on her work with a considering, interested
look. Satisfied, she sent a glance of joyous triumph at
a somewhat older woman, whose place was next, and who
was listening with the amiable effacement of countenance
that is sometimes a more or less successful disguise for
chagrin. On this occasion it seemed to fail, for
Mademoiselle Palicsky turned her attention to Lucien and
her work again with a slight raising of the eyebrows and
a slighter sigh. Her face assumed a gentle melancholy,
as if she were pained at the exhibition of a weakness of
her sex; yet it was unnecessary to be an acute observer
to read there the hope that Lucien's significant phrase