for perfect beauty, there was a slight gleam of audacity. "Why do you
ask me that?" she demanded.

"Because I want to know."

"You think me a bad girl?" And she gave a strange smile.

Newman looked at her a moment; he saw that she was pretty, but he was
not in the least dazzled. He remembered poor M. Nioche's solicitude for
her "innocence," and he laughed as his eyes met hers. Her face was the
oddest mixture of youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow
her searching little smile seemed to contain a world of ambiguous
intentions. She was pretty enough, certainly to make her father nervous;
but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready on the spot to affirm
that she had never parted with it. She had simply never had any; she had
been looking at the world since she was ten years old, and he would have
been a wise man who could tell her any secrets. In her long mornings at
the Louvre she had not only studied Madonnas and St. Johns; she had kept
an eye upon all the variously embodied human nature around her, and she
had formed her conclusions. In a certain sense, it seemed to Newman, M.
Nioche might be at rest; his daughter might do something very audacious,
but she would never do anything foolish. Newman, with his long-drawn,
leisurely smile, and his even, unhurried utterance, was always,
mentally, taking his time; and he asked himself, now, what she was
looking at him in that way for. He had an idea that she would like him
to confess that he did think her a bad girl.

"Oh, no," he said at last; "it would be very bad manners in me to judge
you that way. I don't know you."