her bright comrade-like smiles. "In
a few years you will have the world at your feet imploring you to paint
its portrait. You will fulfil the promise, won't you?"

"What promise, Madame?" I asked.

"The promise of your life now. It is not everyone who does. You won't
allow outside things to send you away from it all."

She had slung the stole which she was embroidering for the vicar across
her shoulders, and holding the two ends looked at me wistfully.

"I owe it to my master, Madame," said I, "to work with all my might."

"If only he had had a master in the old days!" she sighed, "He would
have been by now a famous man full of honours, with all the world can
give in his possession."

"Hasn't he the best the world can give now that he has found you again?"
said I, somewhat shyly.

Joanna gave a short laugh. "You talk sometimes like one's grandfather. I
suppose that is because you became a student of philosophy at a tender
age. Yes, your master has found me again; but after all, what is a
woman? Just a speck of dust on top of the world."

She half seated herself on my painting stool, her back to the picture.

"Tell me, Asticot, is he at least happy?"

"Can you doubt it, Madame?" I cried warmly.

"I do so want him to be happy, Asticot. You see it was all through me
that he gave up his career and took to the strange life he has been
leading, and I feel doubly responsible for his future. Can you
understand that?"

Her blue eyes were very childish and earnest. For all my love of
Paragot, I suddenly felt something like pity for her, as for one who had
undertaken a responsibility that weighed too heavily on slender
shoulders. For the first time it struck me that Paragot and Joanna might
not be a perfectly matched couple. Intuition prompted me to say:--

"My master is utterly happy, but you must give him a little time to
accustom himself to the new order of things."

"That's it," she said. Then there was a pause. "You are such a wise
boy," she continued, "that perhaps you may be able to do something for
me. I can't do it myself--and it's horrid of me to talk about it--but do
you think you might suggest to him that people of our class don't visit
the Black Boar? I don't mind it a bit; but other people--my cousin Major
Walters said something a day or two ago--and it hurt. They don't
understand Gaston's Continental ways. It is natural for a man to go to a
cafe in France; but in England, things are so different."