At the age of eighteen she had refused nearly all the young painters between Ecouen and Domaine de Vallieres; and had spent several summers in England, and four years at a Lausanne school.  She feared neither man nor mouse, and once, when she saw a famous Polish pianist walking on his terrace at Morges, she took him by the hand, asked for a lock of his hair, and was not refused by the amiable virtuoso.  After that Berenice was the acknowledged leader of her class.  The teachers trembled before her sparkling, wrathful black eyes.  At home she ruled the household, and as she was an heiress no one dared to contradict her.  Her contempt for her stepfather was only matched by her impatience in the company of young men.  She pretended—­so her intimates said—­to loathe them.  “Frivolous idiots” was her mildest form of reproof when an ambitious boy would trench upon her pet art theories or attempt to flirt.  She called her mother “the lamb” and her stepfather “the parrot”—­he had a long curved nose; all together she was very unlike the pattern French girl.  Her favourite lounging place was the wall, and after she had draped it with a scarlet shawl and perched herself upon it, she was only too happy to worry any unfortunate man who presented himself.

The night Hubert Falcroft called at Chalfontaine Mademoiselle Elise Evergonde told him that her cousin, Madame Mineur, and Berenice had gone in the direction of the pool.  He had walked over from the station, preferring the open air to the stuffy train.  So a few vigorous steps brought to his view mother and daughter as they slowly moved, encircling each other’s waist.  The painter paused and noted the general loveliness of the picture; the setting sun had splashed the blue basin overhead with delicate pinks, and in the fretted edges of some high floating cloud-fleece there was a glint of fire.  The smooth grass parquet swept gracefully to the semicircle of dark green trees, against the foliage of which the virginal white of the gowns was transposed to an ivory tone by the blue and green keys in sky and forest.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “paint in the foreground a few peacocks languidly dragging their gorgeous tails, and you have a Watteau or a Fragonard—­no, a Monticelli!  Only, Monticelli would have made the peacocks the central motive with the women and trees as an arabesque.”

He was a portraitist who solemnly believed in the principle of decoration—­character must take its chances when he painted.  Falcroft was successful with women’s heads, which he was fond of depicting in misty shadows framed by luxurious accessories.  They called him the Master of Chiffon, at Julien’s; when he threw overboard his old friends and joined the new crowd, their indignation was great.  His title now was the Ribbon Impressionist, and at the last salon of the Independents, Falcroft had the mortification of seeing a battalion of his former companions at anchor in front of his picture, The Lady with the Cat, which they reviled for at least an hour.  He was an American who had lived his life long in France, and only showed race in his nervous, brilliant technic and his fondness for bizarre subjects....