The scales continued while I was dressing, and many desultory reminiscences of the player, and vague reflections upon the unlikelihood of her adventures, went flitting through my mind to their rhythm.  Here she was, scarcely turned thirty, beautiful, brilliant, rich in her own right, as free in all respects to follow her own will as any man could be, with Camille happily at her side, a well grown, rosy, merry miss of twelve,—­here was Nina, thus, to-day; and yet, a mere little ten years ago, I remembered her ... ah, in a very different plight indeed.  True, she has got no more than her deserts; she has paid for her success, every pennyweight of it, in hard work and self-denial.  But one is so expectant, here below, to see Fortune capricious, that, when for once in a way she bestows her favours where they are merited, one can’t help feeling rather dazed.  One is so inured to seeing honest Effort turn empty-handed from her door.

Ten little years ago—­but no.  I must begin further back.  I must tell you something about Nina’s father.

III.

He was an Englishman who lived for the greater part of his life in Paris.  I would say he was a painter, if he had not been equally a sculptor, a musician, an architect, a writer of verse, and a university coach.  A doer of so many things is inevitably suspect; you will imagine that he must have bungled them all.  On the contrary, whatever he did, he did with a considerable degree of accomplishment.  The landscapes he painted were very fresh and pleasing, delicately coloured, with lots of air in them, and a dreamy, suggestive sentiment.  His brother sculptors declared that his statuettes were modelled with exceeding dash and directness; they were certainly fanciful and amusing.  I remember one that I used to like immensely—­Titania driving to a tryst with Bottom, her chariot a lily, daisies for wheels, and for steeds a pair of mettlesome field-mice.  I doubt if he ever got a commission for a complete house; but the staircases he designed, the fire-places, and other bits of buildings, everybody thought original and graceful.  The tunes he wrote were lively and catching, the words never stupid, sometimes even strikingly happy, epigrammatic; and he sang them delightfully, in a robust, hearty baritone.  He coached the youth of France, for their examinations, in Latin and Greek, in history, mathematics, general literature—­in goodness knows what not; and his pupils failed so rarely that, when one did, the circumstance became a nine days’ wonder.  The world beyond the Students’ Quarter had never heard of him, but there he was a celebrity and a favourite; and, strangely enough for a man with so many strings to his bow, he contrived to pick up a sufficient living.