“But it is beautiful—­so beautiful!”

“It is detestable.  I shall have to go back some day and renew my impressions of Florence—­see once more the Piazze of the Signora and San Marco—­and then I shall begin my picture all over again.  Let us go together—­will you?”

“Oh!” she cried, fervently, “think of seeing Italy!—­and with you!”

“It might not be so great a pleasure as you think.  Nothing is such a bore as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my ‘idee fixe’ is my picture—­my great Dominican.  He has taken complete possession of me—­he overshadows me.  I can think of nothing but him.”

“Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose,” said Jacqueline, softly, “for I share your time with him.”

“I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth century,” replied Hubert Marien, half seriously.  “Ouf!—­There! it is done at last.  That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better or for worse.  Now you may fly off.  I set you at liberty—­you poor little thing!”

She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission.  She stood perfectly still in the middle of the studio.

“Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these weeks?” she asked at last.

“I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like.  No one could have done better.”

“And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other present?”

“A beautiful portrait—­what can you want more?”

“The picture is for mamma.  I ask a favor on my own account.”

“I refuse it beforehand.  But you can tell me what it is, all the same.”

“Well, then—­the only part of your house that I have ever been in is this atelier.  You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest.”

“I see! you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning.  Well! certainly, if that would give you any amusement.  But my house contains nothing wonderful.  I tell you that beforehand.”

“One likes to know how one’s friends look at home—­in their own setting, and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier.”

“The best point of view, believe me.  But I am ready to do your bidding.  Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?” asked Marien, as he took her down the staircase leading to his dining-room.

Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them—­it was, besides, her duty.  But she had not been asked to fulfil it.  She hesitated a moment, and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared.  After consideration, the ‘promeneuse’ went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders which meant:  “She can’t come to much harm.”

Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor below.  Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too sedentary life.  She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor.  Then she was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier, where there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters.  “My only luxury,” said Marien.