the fingers of her idle hand, her lips parted, her eyes gleaming with
mischievous inspirations, her face pale with the intensity of her
glee. I can see her as she would look up, eagerly, to listen to
somebody's suggestion, or as she would motion to us to be silent,
crying, 'Attendez--I've got an idea.' Then her pen would dash swiftly,
noisily, over her paper for a little, whilst we all waited
expectantly; and at last she would lean back, drawing a long breath,
and tossing the pen aside, to read her paragraph out to us.

In a word, she managed very well, and by no means died of hunger. She
could scarcely afford Madame Chanve's three-franc table d'hôte, it is
true; but we could dine modestly at Léon's, over the way, and return
to the Bleu for coffee,--though, it must be added, that establishment
no longer enjoyed a monopoly of our custom. We patronised it and the
Vachette, the Source, the Ecoles, the Souris, indifferently. Or we
would sometimes spend our evenings in Nina's rooms. She lived in a
tremendously swagger house in the Avenue de l'Observatoire,--on the
sixth floor, to be sure, but 'there was a carpet all the way up.' She
had a charming little salon, with her own furniture and piano (the
same that had formerly embellished our café), and no end of books,
pictures, draperies, and pretty things, inherited from her father or
presented by her friends.

By this time the inevitable had happened, and we were all in love with
her,--hopelessly, resignedly so, and without internecine rancour, for
she treated us, indiscriminately, with a serene, impartial, tolerant,
derision; but we were savagely, luridly, jealous and suspicious of
all new-comers and of all outsiders. If _we_ could not win her, no one
else should; and we formed ourselves round her in a ring of fire. Oh,
the maddening, mock-sentimental, mock-sympathetic face she would pull,