ok
his lessons in the presence of the girls and was encouraged to chat with
them when the good old man closed his big book. Here everything rested
him after the whirl of that life into which he was thrown by the
luxurious social existence of the Nabob; he come to renew his strength
in this atmosphere of honesty, of simplicity, tried, too, to find
healing there for the wounds with which a hand more indifferent than
cruel stabbed his heart mercilessly.

"Some women have hated me, other women have loved me. She who has hurt
me most never either loved or hated me." Paul had met that woman of whom
Henri Heine speaks. Felicia was full of welcome and cordiality for him.
There was no one whom she treated with more favour. She used to reserve
for him a special smile wherein one felt the kindliness of an artist's
eye arrested by and dwelling on a pleasing type, and the satisfaction of
a jaded mind amused by anything new, however simple in appearance it may
be. She liked that reserve, suggestive in a southerner, the honesty
of that judgment, independent of every artistic or social formula and
enlivened by a touch of provincial accent. These things were a change
for her from the zigzag stroke of the thumb illustrating a eulogy with
its gesture of the studio, from the compliments of comrades on the way
in which she would snub some old fellow, or again from those affected
admirations, from the "char-ar-ming, very nice indeed's" with which
young men about town, sucking the knobs of their canes, were accustomed
to regale her. This young man at any rate did not say such things as
that to her. She had nicknamed him Minerva, on account of his apparent
tranquility and the regularity of his profile; and the moment she saw
him, however far-off, she would call:

"Ah, here comes Minerva. Hail, beautiful Minerva! Put down your helmet
and let us have a chat."

But this familiar, almost fraternal, tone convinced the young man that
he would make no further advance into that feminine comradeship in
which tenderness was wanting, and that he lost each day something of
his charm--the charm of the unforeseen--in the eyes of that woman born
weary, who seemed to have already lived her life and found in all that
she heard or saw the insipidity of a repetition. Felicia was bored.
Her art alone could distract her, carry her away, transport her into a
dazzling fairyland, whence she would fall back worn out, surprised
each time by this awakening like a phy