best--living so long over here." The allusion to the dinner-hour led Mr.
Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them
without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it
for them--who was coming to take them round.

"And then we're going to the circus," Francie said, speaking for the
first time.

If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the
purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in
the young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the
education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much-
-rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of this
order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study
of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research
and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of
which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme gratification of which,
on several occasions, had given him as many indelible memories. He had
once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't know whether it's a
confession of a very poor life, but the most important things that have
happened to me in this world have been simply half a dozen visual
impressions--things that happened through my eyes."

"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer to
this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech.
Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued
to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his
brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience
of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so
much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through