His fine open countenance, the air of candour, of serenity that seemed to dwell about the person of this physician, already famous, who was wont to speak of his art so carelessly and yet seemed to work miraculous cures, the care with which he surrounded her father, these things made a great impression on the young girl.  Jenkins became immediately her friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian.  Occasionally, when, in the studio, somebody—­her father most likely of all—­uttered a risky jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the tongue, or perhaps distract Felicia’s attention.

He often used to take her to pass the day with Mme. Jenkins, endeavouring to prevent her from becoming again the wild young thing she was before going to school, or even something worse, as she threatened to do in the moral neglect, sadder than all other, in which she was left.

But the young girl had as a protection something even better than the irreproachable and worldly example of the handsome Mme. Jenkins:  the art that she adored, the enthusiasm which it implanted in her nature wholly occupied with outside things, the sentiment of beauty, of truth, which, from her thoughtful brain, full of ideas, passed into her fingers with a little quivering of the nerves, a desire of the idea accomplished, of the realized image.  All day long she would work at her sculpture, giving shape to her dreams with that happiness of instinctive youth which lends so much charm to early work; this prevented her from any excessive regret for the austerity of the Belin institution, sheltering and light as the veil of a novice before her vows, and preserved her also from dangerous conversations, unheard amid her unique preoccupation.

Ruys was proud of this talent growing up at his side.  Growing every day feebler, already at that stage in which the artist regrets himself, he found in following Felicia’s progress a certain consolation for his own ended career.  He saw the boasting-tool, which trembled in his hand, taken up again under his eye with a virile firmness and assurance, tempered by all those delicacies of her being which a woman can apply to the realization of an art.  A strange sensation, this double paternity, this survival of genius as it abandons the man whose day is over to pass into him who is at his dawn, like those beautiful, familiar birds which, on the eve of a death, will desert the menaced roof to fly away to a less mournful lodging.

During the last period of her father’s life, Felicia—­a great artist and still a mere child—­used to execute half of his works; and nothing was more touching than this collaboration of father and daughter, in the same studio, around the same group.  The operation did not always proceed peaceably; although her father’s pupil, Felicia already felt her own personality rebel against any despotic direction.  She had those audacities of the beginner, those intuitions of the future which are the heritage of young talents, and, in opposition to the romantic traditions of Sebastien Ruys, a tendency to modern realism, a need to plant that glorious old flag upon some new monument.