under her chin.  But, really, I could not have given her any intelligible excuse for that outrage.  Moreover, she was very busy from the very top to the very bottom of the house, which she persisted in running alone because she couldn’t make up her mind to part with a few francs every month to a servant.  It seemed to me that I was no longer such a favourite with her as I used to be.  That, strange to say, was exasperating, too.  It was as if some idea, some fruitful notion had killed in her all the softer and more humane emotions.  She went about with brooms and dusters wearing an air of sanctimonious thoughtfulness.

The man who to a certain extent took my place in Therese’s favour was the old father of the dancing girls inhabiting the ground floor.  In a tall hat and a well-to-do dark blue overcoat he allowed himself to be button-holed in the hall by Therese who would talk to him interminably with downcast eyes.  He smiled gravely down at her, and meanwhile tried to edge towards the front door.  I imagine he didn’t put a great value on Therese’s favour.  Our stay in harbour was prolonged this time and I kept indoors like an invalid.  One evening I asked that old man to come in and drink and smoke with me in the studio.  He made no difficulties to accept, brought his wooden pipe with him, and was very entertaining in a pleasant voice.  One couldn’t tell whether he was an uncommon person or simply a ruffian, but in any case with his white beard he looked quite venerable.  Naturally he couldn’t give me much of his company as he had to look closely after his girls and their admirers; not that the girls were unduly frivolous, but of course being very young they had no experience.  They were friendly creatures with pleasant, merry voices and he was very much devoted to them.  He was a muscular man with a high colour and silvery locks curling round his bald pate and over his ears, like a barocco apostle.  I had an idea that he had had a lurid past and had seen some fighting in his youth.  The admirers of the two girls stood in great awe of him, from instinct no doubt, because his behaviour to them was friendly and even somewhat obsequious, yet always with a certain truculent glint in his eye that made them pause in everything but their generosity—­which was encouraged.  I sometimes wondered whether those two careless, merry hard-working creatures understood the secret moral beauty of the situation.

My real company was the dummy in the studio and I can’t say it was exactly satisfying.  After taking possession of the studio I had raised it tenderly, dusted its mangled limbs and insensible, hard-wood bosom, and then had propped it up in a corner where it seemed to take on, of itself, a shy attitude.  I knew its history.  It was not an ordinary dummy.  One day, talking with Dona Rita about her sister, I had told her that I thought Therese used to knock it down on purpose with a broom, and Dona Rita had laughed very much.  This, she had