RenÉe often went during the day to paint in a little studio, built out of an old green-house at the bottom of the garden. It was very rustic-looking, half hidden with verdure and walled with ivy, something between an old ruin and a nest.

On a table covered with an Algerian cloth there were, on this particular day in the little studio, a Japanese box with a blue design, a lemon, an old red almanac with the French coat of arms, and two or three other bright-coloured objects grouped together as naturally as possible to make a picture, with the light from the glass roof falling on them. Seated in front of the table, RenÉe was painting all this with brushes as fine as pins on a canvas which already had something on the under side. The skirt of her white piquÉ dress hung in ample folds on each side of the stool on which she was seated. She had gathered a white rose as she came through the garden and had fastened it in her loosely arranged hair just above her ear. Her foot, visible below her dress, in a low shoe which showed her white stocking, was resting on the cross-bar of the easel. Denoisel was seated near her, watching her work and making a bad sketch of her profile in an album he had picked up in the studio.

"Oh, you do pose well," he remarked, as he sharpened his pencil again; "I would just as soon try to catch an omnibus as your expression. You never cease. If you always move like that——"

"Ah, now, Denoisel, no nonsense with your portrait. I hope you'll flatter me a little."

"No more than the sun does. I am as conscientious as a photograph."

"Let me look," she said, leaning back towards Denoisel and holding her maulstick and palette out in front of her. "Oh! I am not beautiful. Truly, now," she continued, as she went on with her painting, "am I like that?"

"Something. Come, RenÉe—honestly now—what do you think you are like yourself—beautiful?"

"No."

"Pretty?"

"No—no——"

"Ah, you took the trouble to think the matter over this time."

"Yes, but I said it twice."

"Good! If you think you are neither beautiful nor pretty, you don't fancy either that you are——"

"Ugly? No, that's quite true. It's very difficult to explain. Sometimes, now, when I look at myself, I think—how am I to explain? Well, I like my looks; it isn't my face, I know, it's just a sort of expression I have at such times, a something that is within me and which I can feel passing over my features. I don't know what it is—happiness, pleasure, a sort of emotion or whatever you like to call it. I get moments like that when it seems to me as though I am taking all my people in finely. All the same, though, I should have liked to be beautiful."

"Really!"

"It must be very pleasant for one's own sake, it seems to me. Now, for instance, I should have liked to be tall, with very black hair. It's stupid to be almost blonde. It's the same with white skin; I should have chosen a skin—well, like Mme. Stavelot, rather orange-coloured. I like that, but it's a matter of taste. And then I should have enjoyed looking in my glass. It's like when I get up in the morning and walk about the carpet with bare feet. I should love to have feet like a statue I once saw—it's just an idea!"

"If that's how you feel you wouldn't care about being beautiful for the sake of other people?"

"Yes and no. Not for every one—only for those I care for. We ought to be ugly for people about whom we are indifferent, for all the people we don't love—don't you think so? They would have just what they deserved then."

Denoisel began sketching again.

"How odd it is, your ideal, to wish to be dark!" he said, after a moment's silence.

"What should you like to be?"

"If I were a woman? I should like to be small and neither very fair nor very dark——"

"Auburn then?"

"And plump—Oh, as plump as a quail."

"Plump? Ah, I can breathe again. Just for a moment I was afraid of a declaration—If the light had not shown up your hair I should have forgotten you were forty."

"Oh, you don't make me out any older than I am, RenÉe; that is exactly my age. But do you know what yours is for me?"

"No——"

"Twelve—and you will always be that age to me."

"Thanks—I am very glad," said RenÉe. "If that's it I shall always be able to tell you all the nonsense that comes into my head. Denoisel," she continued, after a short silence, "have you ever been in love?" She had drawn back slightly from her canvas and was looking at it sideways, her head leaning over her shoulder to see the effect of the colour she had just put on.

"Oh, well! that's a good start," answered Denoisel. "What a question!"

"What's the matter with my question? I'm asking you that just as I might ask you anything else. I don't see anything in it. Would there be any harm in asking such a thing in society? Come now, Denoisel! you say I am twelve years old and I agree to be twelve; but I'm twenty all the same. I'm a young person, that's true, but if you imagine that young persons of my age have never read any novels nor sung any love-songs—why, it's all humbug—it's just posing as sweet innocents. After all, just as you like. If you think I am not old enough I'll take back my question. I thought we were to consider ourselves men when we talked about things together."

"Well, since you want to know, yes—I have been in love."

"Ah! And what effect did it have on you—being in love?"

"You have only to read over again the novels you have read, my dear, and you will find the effect described on every page."

"There, now, that's just what puzzles me; all the books one reads are full of love—there's nothing but that! And then in real life one sees nothing of it—at least I don't see anything of it; on the contrary, I see every one doing without it, and quite easily, too. Sometimes I wonder whether it is not just invented for books, whether it is not all imagined by authors—really."

Denoisel laughed at the young girl's words.

"Tell me, RenÉe," he said, "since we are men for the time being, as you just said and as we talk to each other of what we feel, quite frankly like two old friends, I should like to ask you in my turn whether you have ever—well, not been in love with any one, but whether you have ever cared for any one?"

"No, never," answered RenÉe, after a moment's reflection, "but then I am not a fair example. I fancy that such things happen to people who have an empty heart, no one to think about; people who are not taken up, absorbed, possessed and, as it were, protected by one of those affections which take hold of you wholly and entirely—the affection one has for one's father, for instance."

Denoisel did not answer.

"You don't believe that that does preserve you?" said RenÉe. "Well, but I can assure you I have tried in vain to remember. Oh, I'm examining my conscience thoroughly, I promise you. Well, from my very childhood, I cannot remember anything—no, nothing at all. And yet some of my little friends, who were no older than I was, would kiss the inside of the caps of the little boys who used to play with us; and they would collect the peach-stones from the plates the little boys had used and put them into a box and then take the box to bed with them. Yes, I remember all that. NoÉmi, for instance, Mlle. Bourjot, was very great at all that. But as for me, I simply went on with my games."

"And later on when you were no longer a child?"

"Later on? I have always been a child as regards all that. No, there is nothing at all—I cannot remember a single impression. I mean—well, I'm going to be quite frank with you—I had just a slight, a very slight commencement of what you were talking about—just a sensation of that feeling that I recognised later on in novels—and can you guess for whom?"

"No."

"For you. Oh, it was only for an instant. I soon liked you in quite a different way—and better, too. I respected you and was grateful to you. I liked you for correcting my faults as a spoiled child, for enlarging my mind, for teaching me to appreciate all that is beautiful, elevated and noble; and all, too, in a joking way by making fun of everything that is ugly and worthless and of everything that is dull or mean and cowardly. You taught me how to play ball and how to endure being bored to death with imbeciles. I have to thank you for much of what I think about, for much of what I am and for a little of any good there is in me. I wanted to pay my debt with a true and lasting friendship, and by giving you cordially, as a comrade, some of the affection I have for father."

As RenÉe said these last words she raised her voice slightly and spoke in a graver tone.

"What in the world is that?" exclaimed M. Mauperin, who had just entered and had caught sight of Denoisel's sketch. "Is that intended for my daughter! Why, it's a frightful libel," and M. Mauperin picked up the album and began to tear the page up.

"Oh, papa!" exclaimed RenÉe, "and I wanted it—for a keepsake!"

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