replies; but how fast he works, how he gains your confidence!  You will compromise yourself, little Maria, if you keep him too long by your easel.  Four o’clock will soon strike, and the watchman in the green coat, who is snoozing before Watteau’s designs, will arouse from his torpor, stretch his arms, look at his watch, get up from his seat, and call out “Time to close.”  Why do you allow Maurice to help you arrange your things, to accompany you through the galleries, carrying your box of pastels?  The long, lanky girl in the Salon Carre, who affects the English ways, the one who will never finish copying the “Vierge au coussin vert,” has followed you into the Louvre court.  Take care!  She has noticed, envious creature, that you are very much moved as you take leave of your companion, and that you let your hand remain for a second in his!  This old maid ‘a l’anglaise’ has a viper’s tongue.  To-morrow you will be the talk of the Louvre, and the gossip will spread to the ’Ecole des Beaux-Arts’, even to Signol’s studio, where the two daubers, your respectful admirers, who think of cutting their throats in your honor, will accost each other with a “Well, the pretty pastellist!  Yes, I know, she has a lover.”

If it was only a lover!  But the pretty pastellist has been very careless, more foolish than the old maid or the two young fellows dream of.  It is so sweet to hear him say:  “I love you!” and so delicious to listen for the question:  “And you, do you love me a little?” when she is dying to say, “Yes!” Bending her head and blushing with confusion under Maurice’s ardent gaze, the pretty Maria ends by murmuring the fatal “Yes.”  Then she sees Maurice turn pale with joy, and he says to her, “I must talk to you alone; not before these bores.”  She replies:  “But how?  It is impossible!” Then he asks whether she does not trust him, whether she does not believe him to be an honest man, and the young girl’s looks say more than any protestation would.

“Well! to-morrow morning at ten o’clock—­instead of coming to the Louvre—­will you?  I will wait for you on the Quai d’Orsay, before the Saint-Cloud pier.”

She was there at the appointed hour, overwhelmed with emotion and ready to faint.  He took her by the arm and led her aboard the boat.

“Do you see, now we are almost alone.  Give me the pleasure of wandering through the fields with you.  It is such beautiful weather.  Be tranquil, we shall return early.”

Oh, the happy day!  Maria sees pass before her, as she is seated beside Maurice, who is whispering in her ear loving words and whose glances cover her with caresses, as if in a dream, views of Paris that were not familiar to her, high walls, arches of bridges, then the bare suburbs, the smoking manufactories of Grenelle, the Bas Meudon, with its boats and public-houses.  At last, on the borders of the stream, the park with its extensive verdure appeared.