“What sort of pictures do you desire?” she asked.  “Sacred, or profane?”

“Oh, a few of each,” said Newman.  “But I want something bright and gay.”

“Something gay?  There is nothing very gay in this solemn old Louvre.  But we will see what we can find.  You speak French to-day like a charm.  My father has done wonders.”

“Oh, I am a bad subject,” said Newman.  “I am too old to learn a language.”

“Too old?  Quelle folie!” cried Mademoiselle Noemie, with a clear, shrill laugh.  “You are a very young man.  And how do you like my father?”

“He is a very nice old gentleman.  He never laughs at my blunders.”

“He is very comme il faut, my papa,” said Mademoiselle Noemie, “and as honest as the day.  Oh, an exceptional probity!  You could trust him with millions.”

“Do you always obey him?” asked Newman.

“Obey him?”

“Do you do what he bids you?”

The young girl stopped and looked at him; she had a spot of color in either cheek, and in her expressive French eye, which projected too much 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.”

“But my father has complained to you,” said Mademoiselle Noemie.

“He says you are a coquette.”

“He shouldn’t go about saying such things to gentlemen!  But you don’t believe it.”

“No,” said Newman gravely, “I don’t believe it.”