"But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes," said
Newman.

M. Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes. He would have liked
to be able to say that his daughter's talents were appreciated, and that
her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a scandal
to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who, without a
suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights. He
compromised, and declared that while it was obvious that Mademoiselle
Noemie's reproductions of the old masters had only to be seen to be
coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their altogether peculiar
degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them had kept purchasers
at a respectful distance. "Poor little one!" said M. Nioche, with a
sigh; "it is almost a pity that her work is so perfect! It would be in
her interest to paint less well."

"But if Mademoiselle Noemie has this devotion to her art," Newman once
observed, "why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of the
other day?"

M. Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it made
him chronically uncomfortable. Though he had no desire to destroy the
goose with the golden eggs--Newman's benevolent confidence--he felt a
tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble. "Ah, she is an artist,
my dear sir, most assuredly," he declared. "But, to tell you the truth,
she is also a franche coquette. I am sorry to say," he added in a
moment, shaking his head with a world of harmless bitterness, "that she
comes honestly by it. Her mother was one before her!"