ought not to attempt to paint," the young girl
continued.

"Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not."

She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again--a
point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk
another. While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin
de Bellegarde. He, at all events, was seeing her. He put down the
roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed a little click with his tongue,
accompanied by an elevation of the eyebrows, to Newman.

"Where have you been all these months?" asked Mademoiselle Noemie of our
hero. "You took those great journeys, you amused yourself well?"

"Oh, yes," said Newman. "I amused myself well enough."

"I am very glad," said Mademoiselle Noemie with extreme gentleness, and
she began to dabble in her colors again. She was singularly pretty, with
the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.

Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to his
companion. He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the
same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He was
evidently finding Mademoiselle Noemie extremely interesting; the blue
devils had departed, leaving the field clear.

"Tell me something about your travels," murmured the young girl.

"Oh, I went to Switzerland,--to Geneva and Zermatt and Zurich and all
those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and
down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium--the regular round. How do
you say that, in French--the regular round?" Newman asked of Valentin.

Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde, and then
with a little smile, "I don't understand monsieur," she said, "when he
says so much at once. Would you be so good as to translate?"

"I would rather talk to you out of my own head," Valentin declared.

"No," said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, "you must not talk
to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things. You ought
to tell her to work, to persevere."

"And we French, mademoiselle," said Valentin, "are accused of being
false flatterers!"

"I don't want any flattery, I want only the truth. But I know the
truth."

"All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can do
better than paint," said Valentin.

"I know the truth--I know the truth," Mademoiselle Noemie repeated. And,
dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great