, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from a
newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic
to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap;
for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of the
future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new
system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn't want
to go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an
article that would fetch five times the money in about five years--which
somehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have
seemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain,
but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they
thought would be characteristic of informed people; and he even
convinced them after a little that when once they had got used to
impressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow
was the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him,
because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancing
with strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure something
before the rush.

III

The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers;
and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was
smoking cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the two
gentlemen--it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered with
scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if
the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very
pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young
lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and
who had already come too often to his studio to pick up "glimpses" (the
painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming
candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as
a precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same
impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes
off her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinished
canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutes
the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie
learned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr.
Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of his
mo