“It is a countryman of mine,” said Helen simply.

“He certainly does not speak French,” said mademoiselle mischievously.

“Nor think it,” responded Helen with equal vivacity.  Nevertheless, she wished she had seen him alone.

She thought nothing more of him that day in her finishing exercises.  But the next morning as she went to open her window after dressing, she drew back with a new consciousness, and then, making a peephole in the curtain, looked over the opposite roofs.  She had seen them many times before, but now they had acquired a new picturesqueness, which as her view was, of course, the reverse of the poor painter’s sketch, must have been a transfigured memory of her own.  Then she glanced curiously along the line of windows level with hers.  All these, however, with their occasional revelations of the menage behind them, were also familiar to her, but now she began to wonder which was his.  A singular instinct at last impelled her to lift her eyes.  Higher in the corner house, and so near the roof that it scarcely seemed possible for a grown man to stand upright behind it, was an oeil de boeuf looking down upon the other roofs, and framed in that circular opening like a vignette was the handsome face of Major Ostrander.  His eyes seemed to be turned towards her window.  Her first impulse was to open it and recognize him with a friendly nod.  But an odd mingling of mischief and shyness made her turn away quickly.

Nevertheless, she met him the next morning walking slowly so near her house that their encounter might have been scarcely accidental on his part.  She walked with him as far as the Conservatoire.  In the light of the open street she thought he looked pale and hollow-cheeked; she wondered if it was from his enforced frugality, and was trying to conceive some elaborate plan of obliging him to accept her hospitality at least for a single meal, when he said:—­

“I think you have brought me luck, Miss Maynard.”

Helen opened her eyes wonderingly.

“The two Russian connoisseurs who stared at us so rudely were pleased, however, to also stare at my work.  They offered me a fabulous sum for one or two of my sketches.  It didn’t seem to me quite the square thing to old Favel the picture-dealer, whom I had forced to take a lot at one fifteenth the price, so I simply referred them to him.”

“No!” said Miss Helen indignantly; “you were not so foolish?”

Ostrander laughed.

“I’m afraid what you call my folly didn’t avail, for they wanted what they saw in my portfolio.”

“Of course,” said Helen.  “Why, that sketch of the housetop alone was worth a hundred times more than what you”—­She stopped; she did not like to reveal what he got for his pictures, and added, “more than what any of those usurers would give.”

“I am glad you think so well of it, for I do not mean to sell it,” he said simply, yet with a significance that kept her silent.