for them, she laughed at
his fears, called him provincial, full of affection for the city
in which she had been born, in which she had grown to chaste young
womanhood, and that gave her in return those vivacities, those natural
refinements, that jesting good-humour which incline one to believe
that Paris, with its rain, its fogs, its sky which is no sky, is the
veritable fatherland of woman, whose nerves it heals gently and whose
qualities of intelligence and patience it develops.

Each day Paul de Gery came to appreciate Mlle. Aline better--he was the
only person in the house who so called her--and, strange circumstance,
it was Felicia who completed the cementing of their intimacy. What
relations could there exist between the artist's daughter, moving in the
highest spheres, and this little middle-class girl buried in the
depths of a suburb? Relations of childhood and of friendship, common
recollections, the great court-yard of the Institution Belin, where
they had played together for three years. Paris is full of these
juxtapositions. A name uttered by chance in the course of a conversation
brought out suddenly the bewildered question:

"You know her then?"

"Do I know Felicia? Why, our desks were next each other in the first
form. We had the same garden. Such a nice girl, and so handsome and
clever!"

And, observing the pleasure with which she was listened to, Aline used
to recall the times which already formed a past for her, seductive and
melancholy like all pasts. She was very much alone in life, the little
Felicia. On Thursdays, when the visitors' names were called out in the
parlour, there was no one for her; except from time to time a good but
rather absurd lady, formerly a dancer, it was said, whom Felicia called
the Fairy. In the same way she used to have pet names for all the people
she cared for and whom she transformed in her imaginations. In the
holidays they used to see each other. Mme. Joyeuse, while she refused to
allow Aline to visit the studio of M. Ruys, used to invite Felicia over
for whole days, very short days they seemed, minglings of study, music,
dual dreams, young intimate conversations. "Oh, when she used to talk to
me of her art, with that enthusiasm which she put into everything, how
delighted I was to listen to her! How many things I have understood
through her, of which I should never have had any idea. Even now when we
go to the Louvre with papa, or to the exhibition of the 1st of