a few of those dates of the Middle Ages, barbarous and sharp as the helmets of the warriors of the period.  And in the intervals of these occupations, of this general and constant superintendence, she yet found time to do some pretty needlework, to extract from her work-basket some delicate crochet lace or a piece of tapestry on which she was engaged and to which she clung as closely as the young Elise to her history of France.  Even when she talked, her fingers never remained unoccupied for a moment.

“Do you never take any rest?” said de Gery to her, as she counted under her breath the stitches of her tapestry, “three, four, five,” to secure the right variation in the shading of the colours.

“But this is a rest from work,” she answered.  “You men cannot understand how good needlework is for a woman’s mind.  It gives order to the thoughts, fixes by a stitch the moment that passes what would otherwise pass with it.  And how many griefs are calmed, anxieties forgotten, thanks to this wholly physical act of attention, to this repetition of an even movement, in which one finds—­of necessity and very quickly—­the equilibrium of one’s whole being.  It does not hinder me from following the conversation around me, from listening to you still better than I should if I were doing something.  Three, four, five.”

Oh, yes, she listened.  That was apparent in the animation of her face, in the way in which she would suddenly straighten herself as she sat, needle in air, the thread taut over her raised little finger.  Then she would quickly resume her work, sometimes after putting in a thoughtful word, which agreed generally with the opinions of friend Paul.

An affinity of nature, responsibilities and duties similar in character, drew these two young people together, interested each of them in the other’s occupations.  She knew the names of his two brothers Pierre and Louis, his plans for their future when they should have left school.  Pierre wanted to be a sailor.  “Oh, no, not a sailor,” Bonne Maman would say, “it will be much better for him to come to Paris with you.”  And when he admitted that he was afraid of Paris for them, she laughed at his fears, called him provincial, full of affection for the city in which she had been born, in which she had grown to chaste young womanhood, and that gave her in return those vivacities, those natural refinements, that jesting good-humour which incline one to believe that Paris, with its rain, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the veritable fatherland of woman, whose nerves it heals gently and whose qualities of intelligence and patience it develops.

Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better—­he was the only person in the house who so called her—­and, strange circumstance, it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy.  What relations could there exist between the artist’s daughter, moving in the highest spheres, and this little middle-class girl buried in the depths of a suburb?  Relations of childhood and of friendship, common recollections, the great court-yard of the Institution Belin, where they had played together for three years.  Paris is full of these juxtapositions.  A name uttered by chance in the course of a conversation brought out suddenly the bewildered question: