do all that, of course you can't. Do what you can, then."

"It will be very bad," said Mademoiselle Noemie.

"Oh," said Newman, laughing, "if you are determined it shall be bad, of
course it will. But why do you go on painting badly?"

"I can do nothing else; I have no real talent."

"You are deceiving your father, then."

The young girl hesitated a moment. "He knows very well!"

"No," Newman declared; "I am sure he believes in you."

"He is afraid of me. I go on painting badly, as you say, because I want
to learn. I like it, at any rate. And I like being here; it is a place
to come to, every day; it is better than sitting in a little dark, damp
room, on a court, or selling buttons and whalebones over a counter."

"Of course it is much more amusing," said Newman. "But for a poor girl
isn't it rather an expensive amusement?"

"Oh, I am very wrong, there is no doubt about that," said Mademoiselle
Noemie. "But rather than earn my living as same girls do--toiling with
a needle, in little black holes, out of the world--I would throw myself
into the Seine."

"There is no need of that," Newman answered; "your father told you my
offer?"