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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James
+#48 in our series by Henry James
+
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+
+Title: The Reverberator
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7529]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on May 14, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+THE REVERBERATOR
+
+HENRY JAMES
+
+"I guess my daughter's in here," the old man said leading the way into
+the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but
+that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older
+than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the
+hotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up to
+him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor
+Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait on
+the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way
+across the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He
+looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting
+his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack's line to
+notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman's good offices
+as he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an
+attention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons would
+have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it
+natural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the
+degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should take
+trouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway
+of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George
+Flack stepped in after him.
+
+The reading-room of the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham was none too
+ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist
+principally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was
+easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to
+his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace
+with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal
+of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn't read, and
+the New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just
+now in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with her
+back to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional
+room. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the
+arms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying
+in her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her
+face was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless
+the young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. "Why, it
+ain't Miss Francie--it's Miss Delia!"
+
+"Well, I guess we can fix that," said Mr. Dosson, wandering further into
+the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting them.
+Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent
+transitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he
+sat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As
+he glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet he
+raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. "Delia dear, where's
+your little sister?"
+
+Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could
+be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: "Why,
+Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?"
+
+"Well, this is a good place to meet," her father remarked, as if mildly,
+and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations.
+
+"Any place is good where one meets old friends," said George Flack,
+looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American
+sheet and then put it down. "Well, how do you like Paris?" he
+subsequently went on to the young lady.
+
+"We quite enjoy it; but of course we're familiar now."
+
+"Well, I was in hopes I could show you something," Mr. Flack said.
+
+"I guess they've seen most everything," Mr. Dosson observed.
+
+"Well, we've seen more than you!" exclaimed his daughter.
+
+"Well, I've seen a good deal--just sitting there."
+
+A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency
+to "setting"; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner
+at different times.
+
+"Well, in Paris you can see everything," said the young man. "I'm quite
+enthusiastic about Paris."
+
+"Haven't you been here before?" Miss Delia asked.
+
+"Oh yes, but it's ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?"
+
+"She's all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we're
+going out again."
+
+"It's very attractive for the young," Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor.
+
+"Well then, I'm one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?" Mr.
+Flack continued to the girl.
+
+"It'll seem like old times, on the deck," she replied. "We're going to
+the Bon Marche."
+
+"Why don't you go to the Louvre?  That's the place for YOU."
+
+"We've just come from there: we've had quite a morning."
+
+"Well, it's a good place," the visitor a trifle dryly opined.
+
+"It's good for some things but it doesn't come up to my idea for
+others."
+
+"Oh they've seen everything," said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: "I guess
+I'll go and call Francie."
+
+"Well, tell her to hurry," Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each
+hand.
+
+"She knows my pace," Mr. Flack remarked.
+
+"I should think she would, the way you raced!" the girl returned with
+memories of the Umbria. "I hope you don't expect to rush round Paris
+that way."
+
+"I always rush. I live in a rush. That's the way to get through."
+
+"Well, I AM through, I guess," said Mr. Dosson philosophically.
+
+"Well, I ain't!" his daughter declared with decision.
+
+"Well, you must come round often," he continued to their friend as a
+leave-taking.
+
+"Oh, I'll come round! I'll have to rush, but I'll do it."
+
+"I'll send down Francie." And Francie's father crept away.
+
+"And please give her some more money!" her sister called after him.
+
+"Does she keep the money?" George Flack enquired.
+
+"KEEP it?" Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. "Oh you
+innocent young man!"
+
+"I guess it's the first time you were ever called innocent!" cried
+Delia, left alone with the visitor.
+
+"Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris."
+
+"Well, I can't see that it has hurt US. We ain't a speck extravagant."
+
+"Wouldn't you have a right to be?"
+
+"I don't think any one has a right to be," Miss Dosson returned
+incorruptibly.
+
+The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment.
+
+"That's the way you used to talk."
+
+"Well, I haven't changed."
+
+"And Miss Francie--has she?"
+
+"Well, you'll see," said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves.
+
+Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms
+of his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively:
+"Bon Marche?"
+
+"No, I got them in a little place I know."
+
+"Well, they're Paris anyway."
+
+"Of course they're Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere."
+
+"You must show me the little place anyhow," Mr. Flack continued
+sociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: "The
+old gentleman seems all there."
+
+"Oh he's the dearest of the dear."
+
+"He's a real gentleman--of the old stamp," said George Flack.
+
+"Well, what should you think our father would be?"
+
+"I should think he'd be delighted!"
+
+"Well, he is, when we carry out our plans."
+
+"And what are they--your plans?" asked the young man.
+
+"Oh I never tell them."
+
+"How then does he know whether you carry them out?"
+
+"Well, I guess he'd know it if we didn't," said the girl.
+
+"I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to
+yourself."
+
+"Well, I know what I want," the young lady pursued.
+
+He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released
+from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment's
+silence, after which they looked up at each other. "I've an idea you
+don't want me," said George Flack.
+
+"Oh yes, I do--as a friend."
+
+"Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that's the meanest!"
+he rang out.
+
+"Where's the meanness when I suppose you're not so ridiculous as to wish
+to be anything more!"
+
+"More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?"
+
+"My sister IS myself--I haven't got any other," said Delia Dosson.
+
+"Any other sister?"
+
+"Don't be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?" the girl went
+on.
+
+"Well, I forget which one I WAS in."
+
+"Why, something to do with that newspaper--don't you remember?"
+
+"Yes, but it isn't that paper any more--it's a different one."
+
+"Do you go round for news--in the same way?"
+
+"Well, I try to get the people what they want. It's hard work," said the
+young man.
+
+"Well, I suppose if you didn't some one else would. They will have it,
+won't they?"
+
+"Yes, they will have it." The wants of the people, however, appeared at
+the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at
+his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn't seem to have much
+authority.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" the girl asked.
+
+"Why with Miss Francie. She's taking her time, or rather, I mean, she's
+taking mine."
+
+"Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of
+that," Delia returned.
+
+"All right: I'll give her all I have." And Miss Dosson's interlocutor
+leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if it
+came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat
+there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the
+first indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments
+he asked the young lady if she didn't suppose her father had told her
+sister who it was.
+
+"Do you think that's all that's required?" she made answer with cold
+gaiety. But she added more familiarly: "Probably that's the reason.
+She's so shy."
+
+"Oh yes--she used to look it."
+
+"No, that's her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers
+everything."
+
+"Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia," the young man ventured
+to declare. "You don't suffer much."
+
+"No, for Francie I'm all there. I guess I could act for her."
+
+He had a pause. "You act for her too much. If it wasn't for you I think
+I could do something."
+
+"Well, you've got to kill me first!" Delia Dosson replied.
+
+"I'll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator" he went on.
+
+But the threat left her calm. "Oh that's not what the people want."
+
+"No, unfortunately they don't care anything about MY affairs."
+
+"Well, we do: we're kinder than most, Francie and I," said the girl.
+"But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours."
+
+"Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!" cried George
+Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young
+journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present
+for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to
+give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at
+there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the
+other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on
+the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly
+passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five
+years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart.
+Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and
+colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear
+shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion,
+and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To
+a casual sister's eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted
+themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn't have guessed how
+little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances
+of Paris couldn't fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself,
+in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked
+for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig
+on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and  yet, with
+its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as calm
+as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, the
+meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing
+businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head
+of one--it would probably have  been thought of her that she was likely
+to become a Doctor or a Judge.
+
+An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack's acquaintance
+with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the
+Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some
+slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party
+had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without
+meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson
+had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a
+second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure,
+said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it wasn't,
+as he called it, the same old visit. She didn't repudiate the
+accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been
+embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a
+suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been
+capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much:
+what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European stay
+of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular
+future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet
+with George Flack's  approval--he  also had a big undertaking on that
+side and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have
+his friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place
+like that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in
+one of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him.
+
+"Oh, well, you'll see as much as you want of us--the way you'll have to
+take us," Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which that
+way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take anything--
+which was just as it came. "Oh well, you'll see what you'll make of it,"
+the girl returned; and she would give for the present no further
+explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if it however she
+professed an interest in Mr. Flack's announced undertaking--an interest
+springing apparently from an interest in the personage himself. The man
+of wonderments and measurements we have smuggled into the scene would
+have gathered that Miss Dosson's attention was founded on a conception
+of Mr. Flack's intrinsic brilliancy. Would his own impression have
+justified that?--would he have found such a conception contagious? I
+forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would saddle me with the care
+of showing what right our officious observer might have had to his
+particular standard. Let us therefore simply note that George Flack had
+grounds for looming publicly large to an uninformed young woman. He was
+connected, as she supposed, with literature, and wasn't a sympathy with
+literature one of the many engaging attributes of her so generally
+attractive little sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a
+reader: hadn't a trail of forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line
+of travel of the party of three? The elder girl grabbed at them on
+leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but usually found that she had
+brought odd volumes. She considered however that as a family they had an
+intellectual link with the young journalist, and would have been
+surprised if she had heard the advantage of his acquaintance questioned.
+
+Mr. Flack's appearance was not so much a property of his own as a
+prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they
+might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before.
+And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no
+ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn't conveniently
+have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that
+you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind
+you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even
+aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group:
+aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded
+him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in
+whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or
+advertisement, the air of representing a "line of goods" for which there
+is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be
+individually designated: a number, like that of the day's newspaper,
+would have served all his, or at least all your, purpose, and you would
+have vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. As
+every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson's visitor
+would have been quite adequately marked as "young commercial American."
+Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its
+sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was
+twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey
+overcoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might
+have availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience
+of society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a green
+hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in
+Europe for an American "society-paper."
+
+If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in
+she addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she
+had been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicated
+by the manner of her response. "Well, the way you DO turn up," she said,
+smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the
+hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had
+made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as
+evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence.
+Her sister's attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance
+had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible
+but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his
+having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to
+the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure
+which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking
+from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a
+loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl
+was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable
+likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still and
+scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called
+animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy
+lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick
+movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible
+life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most
+usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been
+said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have
+improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness
+would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm the
+implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a
+newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her
+neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her
+dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in her
+face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and
+inconceivabilities of ignorance.
+
+Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young
+lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all the
+things. "Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we've got so many,"
+Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. "There were a few
+dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn't find; but I guess I've got
+most of them and most of the gloves."
+
+"Well, what are you carting them about for?" George Flack enquired,
+taking the parcel from her. "You had better let me handle them. Do you
+buy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?"
+
+"Well, it only makes fifty apiece," Francie yieldingly smiled. "They
+ain't really nice--we're going to change them."
+
+"Oh I won't be mixed up with that--you can't work that game on these
+Frenchmen!" the young man stated.
+
+"Oh with Francie they'll take anything back," Delia Dosson declared.
+"They just love her, all over."
+
+"Well, they're like me then," said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. "I'LL
+take her back if she'll come."
+
+"Well, I don't think I'm ready quite yet," the girl replied. "But I hope
+very much we shall cross with you again."
+
+"Talk about crossing--it's on these boulevards we want a life-
+preserver!" Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the hotel and
+the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. There were
+many vehicles.
+
+"Won't this thing do? I'll tie it to either of you," George Flack said,
+holding out his bundle. "I suppose they won't kill you if they love
+you," he went on to the object of his preference.
+
+"Well, you've got to know me first," she answered, laughing and looking
+for a chance, while they waited to pass over.
+
+"I didn't know you when I was struck." He applied his disengaged hand to
+her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of his
+observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their
+father had given her that money. She replied that he had given her
+loads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to
+say that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father.
+
+"Why you don't mean to say you want to be our brother!" Francie prattled
+as they went down the Rue de la Paix.
+
+"I should like to be Miss Delia's, if you can make that out," he
+laughed.
+
+"Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab," Miss Delia
+returned. "I presume you and Francie don't take this for a promenade-
+deck."
+
+"Don't she feel rich?" George Flack demanded of Francie. "But we do
+require a cart for our goods"; and he hailed a little yellow carriage,
+which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and,
+still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at
+the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into
+the court again and took his place in his customary chair.
+
+
+
+II
+
+The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of
+women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the
+rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the
+flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent and
+Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were
+many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles
+of luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. P.
+Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis Mo.;
+rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters,
+conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies,
+arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with black
+oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons staying
+and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together with
+vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It
+was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree
+contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft
+and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of
+ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would
+have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a
+truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from
+time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at the
+street.
+
+He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and
+then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and
+had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn't assuage. He
+looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young
+women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but
+the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he
+knew all about these. It's not upon each other that the animals in the
+same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was a
+silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that
+helped to account for his daughter Francie's various delicacies. He was
+fair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment that
+the question of how he should hold himself had never in his life
+occurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held him
+rather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end  of which he
+seemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin
+light whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his
+cheeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose of
+comedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinking
+over, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that had
+just occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just as it
+hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and his
+clothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work of a
+French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that it
+is in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd in
+Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing.
+
+Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest
+composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had a
+native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as a
+beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of
+particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large
+fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy
+speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a "good thing"; and as he
+sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he
+might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his
+song or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And
+he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply
+because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune
+in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up the
+wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an
+unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities,
+and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much more
+and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and
+railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property.
+He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present
+self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was
+perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and
+Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had not
+perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter's beauty: he would
+scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a
+valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the
+eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later
+days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books
+behind her. Moreover wasn't her French so good that he couldn't
+understand it?
+
+The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only
+directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was
+under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to
+have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been
+the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were
+lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply
+floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one
+of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again
+inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were
+out for any time the occasion affected him as a "weather-breeder"--the
+wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their
+now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the
+temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson
+never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented
+the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions
+represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and
+Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see
+them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had
+slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant
+surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient
+distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences
+of Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel
+at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but he
+would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong
+convictions: one of which was that the children should never go out with
+a gentleman they hadn't seen before. The sense of their having, and his
+having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere
+placidity of his personally foregoing the young man's society in favour
+of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that
+the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the
+safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful
+gentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact
+of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper
+told you everything there was in the world every morning, that was what
+a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never
+supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack's
+and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy
+chances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls might
+have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They were
+his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to him
+more than he to them.
+
+They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that
+Mr. Flack's very profession would somehow make everything turn out to
+their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them
+back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have
+been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady
+smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured
+to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day
+indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr.
+Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was
+confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which
+affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of
+theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of
+waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he
+lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It
+wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not
+beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still
+accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from
+each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his
+possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other,
+mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen
+and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of
+enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time:
+an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the
+consciousness of failure. "Won't you just step in and take dinner with
+us?" he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything
+appeared to minister.
+
+"Well, that's a handsome offer," George Flack replied while Delia put it
+on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes.
+
+"Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your
+cakes. It's twenty minutes past six, and the table d'hote's on time."
+
+"You don't mean to say you dine at the table d'hote!" Mr. Flack cried.
+
+"Why, don't you like that?"--and Francie's candour of appeal to their
+comrade's taste was celestial.
+
+"Well, it isn't what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many
+flowerpots and chickens' legs."
+
+"Well, would you like one of these restaurants?" asked Mr. Dosson. "_I_
+don't care--if you show us a good one."
+
+"Oh I'll show you a good one--don't you worry." Mr. Flack's tone was
+ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place.
+
+"Well, you've got to order the dinner then," said Francie.
+
+"Well, you'll see how I could do it!" He towered over her in the pride
+of this feat.
+
+"He has got an interest in some place," Delia declared. "He has taken us
+to ever so many stores where he gets his commission."
+
+"Well, I'd pay you to take them round," said Mr. Dosson; and with much
+agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally
+forth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack's guidance.
+
+If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more
+original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at
+the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of
+the following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly
+made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who
+had so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for
+issues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the
+press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right
+path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how
+much they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they
+didn't know anything about anything, even about such a matter as
+ordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselves
+rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfully
+various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had
+appointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day,
+and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps,
+with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l'Univers et de
+Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in
+reading the lists of Americans who "registered" at the bankers' and at
+Galignani's. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnly
+over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and
+found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting
+while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss
+Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had "left for Brussels."
+
+Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he wanted--
+which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--and Delia
+was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little sharp.
+He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he
+alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a
+humorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over
+the registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little party
+not sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new
+stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to
+observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends.
+They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations that
+never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they
+had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be
+found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they
+should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up
+their minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour,
+through some accident, that the hunted game had "left for" Biarritz even
+as the Rosenheims for Brussels. "We know plenty of people if we could
+only come across them," Delia had more than once observed: she scanned
+the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of the
+unsatisfactory way in which friends at home would "write out" that other
+friends were "somewhere in Europe." She expressed the wish that such
+correspondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague.
+Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out and
+had left cards for them without an address and superscribed with some
+mocking dash of the pencil--"So sorry to miss you!" or "Off to-morrow!"
+The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them over
+for a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards,
+brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flack
+generally knew where they were, the people who were "somewhere in
+Europe." Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by the
+voices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he held
+his peace on purpose; he didn't want any outsiders; he thought their
+little party just right. Mr. Dosson's place in the scheme of Providence
+was to "go" with Delia while he himself "went" with Francie, and nothing
+would have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The young
+man was professionally so occupied with other people's affairs that it
+should doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed to
+have affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was Francie
+Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had
+become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He
+counted all the things she didn't care about--her soft inadvertent eyes
+helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said,
+that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few
+interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold
+conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the
+air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused
+resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her
+brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience.
+George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable
+fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions
+and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards
+and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency
+however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea
+that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could
+catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked
+to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult
+with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the
+boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a
+scruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the
+little these good people knew of what they could do with their money.
+They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were
+incapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of social
+humility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added to
+their loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strike
+George Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in the
+places where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turn to
+one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied of
+waiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to which
+he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on the
+level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees.
+
+He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being
+careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent
+with propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of
+their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the late
+spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on the
+"terrace," amid the array of small tables at the door of the
+establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them from
+afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he had
+appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the many-
+coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the features
+in the panorama were base they were only so in a version that the social
+culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. George Flack
+considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson:
+wouldn't the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? and
+wasn't the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too that
+he nattered and caressed Miss Francie's father, for there was no one to
+whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, the
+projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in the
+old gentleman's mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr.
+Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, "Well, where have
+you got to now?"--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flack
+reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia and
+Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the persons
+on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred this
+distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant
+interposition of "Is that so?" and "Well, that's good," just as
+submissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the first
+time.
+
+In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme,
+though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and
+especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what
+he wanted and that it wasn't in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified
+this statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr.
+Flack's designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as
+she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia's vision of the
+danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely
+connected, as was natural, with the idea of an "engagement": this idea
+was in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddest
+way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged
+but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up
+her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter.
+It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to
+her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if
+her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly
+it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theory
+that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia's
+conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent:
+it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of
+being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and
+subject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her
+withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of
+experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady's delicacy. She
+felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--he
+would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as
+something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she
+discriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired that
+for Francie it shouldn't lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at
+such a union under the influence of that other view which she kept as
+yet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasion
+should come up; giving her sister to understand that she would never
+speak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Which
+was where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence.
+
+"To suppose what?" Francie would ask as if she were totally
+unacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions of
+young men.
+
+"Well, you'll see--when he begins to say things you won't like!" This
+sounded ominous on Delia's part, yet her anxiety was really but thin:
+otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack
+of perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--though
+it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their life
+--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to her
+father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was
+"after"; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it
+as a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was
+not of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never
+really do anything--that is would never really like anything--her
+nearest relatives didn't like. Her sister's docility was a great comfort
+to Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, was
+the first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things much
+more than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenience
+of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia's reasons--
+for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular
+irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as the
+controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible
+treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake
+to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even her
+father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make
+any change. She couldn't have accepted any gentleman as a party to an
+engagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--without
+reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair
+without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder
+daughter's admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack
+would have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, in
+his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some
+humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true
+domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery on
+Francie's conquest? Mr. Flack's attributive intentions became a theme of
+indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed
+by the freedom of all this tribute. "Well, he HAS told us about half we
+know," she used to reply with an air of the judicious that the
+undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have found
+indescribably quaint.
+
+Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated
+the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady's life to
+have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it
+done well; also that he knew a "lovely artist," a young American of
+extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He
+led his trio to this gentleman's studio, where they saw several pictures
+that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie
+protested that she didn't want to be done in THAT style, and Delia
+declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic
+lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so
+that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown
+them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and
+confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question,
+among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr.
+Waterlow's productions took their place for the most part in the
+category of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friends
+retired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. George
+Flack told them however that they couldn't get out of it, inasmuch as he
+had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit.
+They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would
+have to, 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
+moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he
+pronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--as
+if it had been French.
+
+After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father on
+this occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling back on
+their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it to
+each other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charm of
+line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties
+through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from
+their conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with the
+aid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowed
+with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest
+order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this,
+however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--it
+had been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour
+of leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather
+distant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters on
+his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going to
+Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a little
+excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks
+of the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long
+days and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for
+though he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked,
+he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--they
+had after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl in
+hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This
+amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the
+artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had
+quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that
+they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was simply
+that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be
+comparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all take
+their time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--the
+question of the pretty one's leaving Paris for the summer would be sure
+to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one
+clearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted a
+reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow
+remarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile,
+before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--his
+eye would take possession of her.
+
+His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was
+perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr.
+Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l'Univers et
+de Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would
+not, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable
+liberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America
+and was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew
+that in Paris young men didn't call at hotels on blameless maids, but he
+also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn't visit
+young men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--none
+save the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part
+communicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who was
+after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French,
+school, jeered at the other's want of native instinct, at the way he
+never knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was
+obliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that in the
+great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--he
+couldn't tell which was which. He would have had a country and
+countrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matter
+had never been properly settled for him, and it's one there's ever a
+great difficulty in a gentleman's settling for himself. Born in Paris,
+he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family that
+French society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinian and
+a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His three
+sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany while
+the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother had
+fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country.
+Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather,
+was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed,
+extorted from him the promise that he wouldn't take service in its
+armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in
+1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough on
+the altar of sympathy.
+
+The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place:
+he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he
+was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what
+he might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him
+in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that
+the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and he
+had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family
+however had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each
+member of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his
+sisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard
+this scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a
+family in which there was no individual but only a collective property.
+Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially
+by going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers,
+whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by
+Monsieur Carolus.  He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself in
+touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so
+high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of
+freshness, but he needn't have gone far: he would have had but to turn
+his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it.
+Like many of his dawdling coaevals  he  gave  much attention  to art,
+lived as much as possible in that more select world where it is a
+positive duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he
+espoused the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive
+and conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He
+defended certain of Waterlow's purples and greens as he would have
+defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully
+acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that
+belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for
+himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down
+particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were,
+Waterlow's purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he
+hadn't failed there other failures wouldn't have mattered, not even that
+of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend's
+agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much and
+whose companions he didn't like, that he felt supremely without a
+vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised
+for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for
+a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow's sense of that source of
+charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were
+sometimes too crude.
+
+He avenged himself for the artist's profanation of his first attempt to
+approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a
+second. He went about six o'clock, when he supposed she would have
+returned from her day's wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the
+sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her
+father and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young
+man might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of
+such narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The little
+party was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had
+collected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, on
+the first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, with
+sofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeur
+and the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with
+a half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table.
+After young Probert's first call his name was often on the lips of the
+simple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of a
+secret of his perception that Francie hit the bull's-eye "every time."
+Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matter of
+course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not gone
+after the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he entered
+the hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motive
+became startlingly vivid.
+
+Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she said
+there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon these
+mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed for
+assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and
+returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr.
+Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that
+as soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his
+paper. Mr. Flack promised to "nose round"; he said the best plan would
+be that the results should "come back" to her in the Reverberator; it
+might have been gathered from him that "the people over there"--in other
+words the mass of their compatriots--wouldn't be unpersuadable that they
+wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove none
+the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able to
+give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had
+spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn't scare up a
+single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down
+and all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot,
+and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of the American
+colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia's
+imagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting
+roundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to "get" Francie, as she
+said to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed the
+members of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and
+she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and
+the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always
+changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the
+windows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of the
+enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals,
+as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with
+a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this
+theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already
+made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously,
+this question of getting Francie in.
+
+When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert's net couldn't be either the
+rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general
+shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of
+inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn't measure at
+the time. She asked if that didn't perhaps prove on the contrary quite
+the opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others.
+Wasn't there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn't they be
+somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at this
+weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that
+Delia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there.
+
+"Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far you
+can't find where they went in?"--that was the phrase in which he
+recognised the truth of the girl's grope. Delia's fixed eyes assented,
+and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: "That's the
+kind of family we want to handle!"
+
+"Well, perhaps they won't want to be handled," Delia had returned with a
+still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. "You had better
+find out," she had added.
+
+The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr.
+Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his arrival
+had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the
+representative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they
+treated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson had
+said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia had
+remarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was so big;
+and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea.
+Mentioning that that wasn't the place where they usually received--she
+liked to hear herself talk of "receiving"--she led the party up to her
+white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she
+liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk
+chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut
+or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the
+dinner-hour, she sighed: "Well, I suppose you're so used to them--to the
+best--living so long over here." The allusion to the dinner-hour led Mr.
+Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them
+without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it
+for them--who was coming to take them round.
+
+"And then we're going to the circus," Francie said, speaking for the
+first time.
+
+If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the
+purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in
+the young man's spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the
+education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much-
+-rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of this
+order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study
+of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research
+and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of
+which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme gratification of which,
+on several occasions, had given him as many indelible memories. He had
+once said to his friend Waterlow: "I don't know whether it's a
+confession of a very poor life, but the most important things that have
+happened to me in this world have been simply half a dozen visual
+impressions--things that happened through my eyes."
+
+"Ah malheureux, you're lost!" the painter had exclaimed in answer to
+this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech.
+Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued
+to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his
+brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience
+of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so
+much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through
+one's fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave
+it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how
+straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he
+felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of
+those "important" facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It
+was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of
+his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense.
+
+It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced
+him to accept Mr. Dosson's invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted
+by the girl's appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him
+for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring
+her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it
+was rare she herself didn't. He liked to be intensely conscious, but
+liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had
+told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them,
+that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover
+the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the
+west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would
+dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see
+the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment
+and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his
+sister's in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d'Outreville and M. de Grospre, old
+M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge;
+but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he
+preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfully
+wanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it
+in. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had
+proposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn't
+favour this suggestion; he said "We want a double good dinner to-day and
+Mr. Flack has got to order it." Upon this Delia had asked the visitor if
+HE couldn't order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted,
+before he could  answer the question, "Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That's
+just the point, ain't it?" Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish
+but to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he
+knew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost
+none, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a
+charming start.
+
+"Oh we ain't anything--if you mean that," Delia said. "If you go on
+you'll go on beyond us."
+
+"We ain't anything here, my dear, but we're a good deal at home," Mr.
+Dosson jocosely interjected.
+
+"I think we're very nice anywhere!" Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston
+Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in
+these amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none
+the less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if
+he had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. I
+hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took the
+correspondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the
+young man "talk" for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal.
+They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something,
+usually so irresistible in George Flack's mind, suffered an odd check.
+He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense other
+than the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, but
+though Mr. Flack didn't know that on a first occasion he would have
+thought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie,
+and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He said
+to himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean class
+anyway, the people for whom their own country wasn't good enough. He
+didn't go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirable
+establishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to order a
+bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil this
+gentleman's amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus in
+the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o'clock, the company was
+conveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. The
+occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that the
+sense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not needed
+to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hate
+his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submission
+to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an important
+observation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to the
+notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed a
+great desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would help
+them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention that
+would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contact
+with the other members, especially with the female members, of his
+family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required for
+purposes of argument that Mr. Probert's family should have female
+members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He
+grasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie
+and Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on
+Francie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when he
+had brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet their
+pile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor young
+man, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased it
+to herself--about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson
+learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had
+houses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that one of
+these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less
+exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it
+didn't prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the
+evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It
+also as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had
+been proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to
+multiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had
+characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the
+young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay for
+them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly
+content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he
+could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it.
+He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt any
+arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn't been
+referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia
+had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as
+guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn't be of the
+company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn't rope HIM in. In fact she
+was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow
+would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of
+courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a
+subject. Delia's hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he
+would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in
+a festival not graced by Mr. Flack's presence. His idea of loyalty was
+that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to
+take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get
+shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George
+Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri
+Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European
+manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself
+would.
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus;
+she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair
+after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions
+farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked off
+in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not
+separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each
+other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night in
+their empty saloon. "Well, I want to know when you're going to stop,"
+Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a
+continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been
+saying.
+
+"Stop what?" asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron.
+
+"Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack."
+
+Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in her
+small flat patient voice: "Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so
+foolish?"
+
+"Father, I wish you'd speak to her. Francie, I ain't foolish," Delia
+submitted.
+
+"What do you want me to say to her?" Mr. Dosson enquired. "I guess I've
+said about all I know."
+
+"Well, that's in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest."
+
+"I guess there's no one in earnest but you," Francie remarked. "These
+ain't so good as the last."
+
+"NO, and there won't be if you don't look out. There's something you can
+do if you'll just keep quiet. If you can't tell difference of style,
+well, I can!" Delia cried.
+
+"What's the difference of style?" asked Mr. Dosson. But before this
+question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of
+"carrying-on." Quiet? Wasn't she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia
+replied that a girl wasn't quiet so long as she didn't keep others so;
+and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack.
+"Why don't you take him and let Francie take the other?" Mr. Dosson
+continued.
+
+"That's just what I'm after--to make her take the other," said his elder
+daughter.
+
+"Take him--how do you mean?" Francie returned.
+
+"Oh you know how."
+
+"Yes, I guess you know how!" Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of
+prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent.
+
+"Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that's what _I_ want to know,"
+Delia pursued to her sister. "If you want to go bang home you're taking
+the right way to do it."
+
+"What has that got to do with it?" Mr. Dosson audibly wondered.
+
+"Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where
+his paper's published? That's where you'll have to pull up sooner or
+later," Delia declaimed.
+
+"Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?" Francie said with
+her small sweet weariness.
+
+"It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right
+home SOME time."
+
+"Well then you've got to go without Mr. Probert," Delia made answer with
+decision. "If you think he wants to live over there--"
+
+"Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself," Francie
+argued with passionless pauses.
+
+"Yes, and when he gets there he'll want to come back. I thought you were
+so much interested in Paris."
+
+"My poor child, I AM interested!" smiled Francie. "Ain't I interested,
+father?"
+
+"Well, I don't know how you could act differently to show it."
+
+"Well, I do then," said Delia. "And if you don't make Mr. Flack
+understand _I_ will."
+
+"Oh I guess he understands--he's so bright," Francie vaguely pleaded.
+
+"Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright," said Mr. Dosson. "Good-night,
+chickens," he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose.
+
+His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the
+younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when Delia
+was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her
+sister's insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia
+whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have
+prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour
+without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while it
+hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be
+violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile
+a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was
+something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could
+only involve a "fuss." The real answer to anything, to everything her
+sister might say at these hours of urgency was: "Oh if you want to make
+out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to
+remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do.
+Therefore if there's to be any comfort for either of us we had both much
+better just go on as we are." She didn't however on this occasion meet
+her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force
+seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for
+the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France and
+Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did they
+hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no
+better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident
+truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she
+never alluded save as "over here" that the American girl was now called
+upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point
+that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that
+she didn't care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she
+herself didn't care, but that Delia ought to for consistency.
+
+"Well, he's a prince compared with Mr. Flack," Delia declared.
+
+"He hasn't the same ability; not half."
+
+"He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of
+people I want you to know."
+
+"What good will they do me?" Francie asked. "They'll hate me. Before
+they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that
+they'd think monstrous."
+
+"Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?"
+
+"Oh but he wouldn't then! He'd hate me too."
+
+"Then all you've got to do is not to do it," Delia concluded.
+
+"Oh but I should--every time," her sister went on.
+
+Delia looked at her a moment. "What ARE you talking about?"
+
+"Yes, what am I? It's disgusting!" And Francie sprang up.
+
+"I'm sorry you have such thoughts," said Delia sententiously.
+
+"It's disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his
+society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you."
+
+"It's disgusting if he isn't just dying; but it isn't if he is."
+
+"Well, I'll make him skip!" Francie went on with a sudden approach to
+sharpness.
+
+"Oh you're worse than father!" her sister cried, giving her a push as
+they went to bed.
+
+They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before
+the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this
+being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on
+the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening
+was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the
+grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and
+forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over the
+curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the
+terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet
+in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here and
+there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of the
+garrison. How it came, after Delia's warning in regard to her carrying-
+on--especially as she hadn't failed to feel the weight of her sister's
+wisdom--Francie couldn't have told herself: certain it is that before
+ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening
+wouldn't pass without Mr. Flack's taking in some way, and for a certain
+time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so,
+that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to
+appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended
+by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him.
+This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a
+great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched
+away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and he
+was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his
+ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they
+were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to
+protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold
+spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague
+soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who
+had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to be
+let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned
+against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at
+their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia,
+following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still
+stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple
+who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr.
+Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some
+such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd
+spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently
+under Delia's direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie
+guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite
+signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted
+on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as
+Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh,
+looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of
+herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored
+evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in
+turning away was--"Yes, I'm watching you, and I depend on you to finish
+him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I'll allow you half an
+hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It's very kind of me to
+give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to
+tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!"
+
+Francie didn't in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in
+presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious
+historian to admit that she believed him as "bright" as her father had
+originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to meet.
+She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their
+brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or
+power that this term didn't seem to cover. In many a girl so great a
+kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of
+close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty
+girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered
+her sister with: "No, I wasn't in love with him, but somehow, since
+you're so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses me."
+It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie's simplicity of
+character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order
+to prove to herself that she wasn't bullied. She didn't care whether she
+were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia
+believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man she
+had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who fairly
+brooded with devotion. She wasn't clear herself as to whether it
+mightn't be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed
+inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet
+thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt
+as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn't care even if he should
+think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were
+hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned
+her own again toward her retreating companions. "They're going to
+dinner; we oughtn't to be dawdling here," she said.
+
+"Well, if they're going to dinner they'll have to eat the napkins. I
+ordered it and I know when it'll be ready," George Flack answered.
+"Besides, they're not going to dinner, they're going to walk in the
+park. Don't you worry, we shan't lose them. I wish we could!" the young
+man added in his boldest gayest manner.
+
+"You wish we could?"
+
+"I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no
+other."
+
+"Well, I don't know what the dangers are," said Francie, setting herself
+in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few
+steps he stopped her again.
+
+"You won't have confidence. I wish you'd believe what I tell you."
+
+"You haven't told me anything." And she turned her back to him, looking
+away at the splendid view. "I do love the scenery," she added in a
+moment.
+
+"Well, leave it alone a little--it won't run away! I want to tell you
+something about myself, if I could flatter myself you'd take any
+interest in it." He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low
+wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end
+gently round with both hands.
+
+"I'll take an interest if I can understand," said Francie.
+
+"You can understand right enough if you'll try. I got to-day some news
+from America," he went on, "that I like awfully. The Reverberator has
+taken a jump."
+
+This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. "Taken a
+jump?"
+
+"It has gone straight up. It's in the second hundred thousand."
+
+"Hundred thousand dollars?" said Francie.
+
+"No, Miss Francie, copies. That's the circulation. But the dollars are
+footing up too."
+
+"And do they all come to you?"
+
+"Precious few of them! I wish they did. It's a sweet property."
+
+"Then it isn't yours?" she asked, turning round to him. It was an
+impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew
+how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told
+her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife.
+
+"Mine? You don't mean to say you suppose I own it!" George Flack
+shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so
+strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: "It's a
+pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for
+granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, it
+seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I
+wouldn't be stumping round here; I'd give my attention to another branch
+of the business. That is I'd give my attention to all, but I wouldn't go
+round with the delivery-cart. Still, I'm going to capture the blamed
+thing, and I want you to help me," the young man went on; "that's just
+what I wanted to speak to you about. It's a big proposition as it
+stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper
+the world has seen. That's where the future lies, and the man who sees
+it first is the man who'll make his pile. It's a field for enlightened
+enterprise that hasn't yet begun to be worked." He continued, glowing as
+if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed
+itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively.
+The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the
+prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it
+was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof
+of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. "There are
+ten thousand things to do that haven't been done, and I'm going to do
+them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the
+prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you'll see!--from
+day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every breakfast-
+table in the United States: that's what the American people want and
+that's what the American people are going to have. I wouldn't say it to
+every one, but I don't mind telling you, that I consider my guess as
+good as the next man's on what's going to be required in future over
+there. I'm going for the inside view, the choice bits, the chronique
+intime, as they say here; what the people want's just what ain't told,
+and I'm going to tell it. Oh they're bound to have the plums! That's
+about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign of 'private'
+and 'hands off' and 'no thoroughfare' and thinking you can keep the
+place to yourself. You ain't going to be able any longer to monopolise
+any fact of general interest, and it ain't going to be right you should;
+it ain't going to continue to be possible to keep out anywhere the light
+of the Press. Now what I'm going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet
+made and make it shine all over the place. We'll see who's private then,
+and whose hands are off, and who'll frustrate the People--the People
+THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That's a sign of the American people that they DO
+want to know, and it's the sign of George P. Flack," the young man
+pursued with a rising spirit, "that he's going to help them. But I'll
+make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as
+I tell you, Miss Francie, it's a job in which you can give me a lovely
+lift."
+
+"Well, I don't see how," said Francie candidly. "I haven't got any
+choice bits or any facts of general interest." She spoke gaily because
+she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he
+wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he
+didn't own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of
+the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently
+grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to
+make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her and
+pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by a
+vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her
+father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick
+and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum
+required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his
+enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as
+they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for
+the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should
+have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial
+aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had
+she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea
+of putting her hand into her father's pocket, and she felt that even
+Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture.
+I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look
+as he replied: "Do you mean to say you don't know, after all I've done?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know what you've done."
+
+"Haven't I tried--all I know--to make you like me?"
+
+"Oh dear, I do like you!" cried Francie; "but how will that help you?"
+
+"It will help me if you'll understand how I love you."
+
+"Well, I won't understand!" replied the girl as she walked off.
+
+He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: "Do
+you mean to say you haven't found that out?"
+
+"Oh I don't find things out--I ain't an editor!" Francie gaily quavered.
+
+"You draw me out and then you gibe at me," Mr. Flack returned.
+
+"I didn't draw you out. Why, couldn't you see me just strain to get
+away?"
+
+"Don't you sympathise then with my ideas?"
+
+"Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid," said Francie,
+who hadn't in the least taken them in.
+
+"Well then why won't you work with me? Your affection, your brightness,
+your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything
+to me."
+
+"I'm very sorry, but I can't, I can't!" she protested.
+
+"You could if you would, quick enough."
+
+"Well then I won't!" And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to
+mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. "You
+must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one
+little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa."
+
+"Of course I supposed you'd do that," he allowed.
+
+"I mean about your paper."
+
+"About my paper?"
+
+"So as he could give you the money--to do what you want."
+
+"Lord, you're too sweet!" George Flack cried with an illumined stare.
+"Do you suppose I'd ever touch a cent of your father's money?"--a speech
+not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own
+discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to
+be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law's purse-
+strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour about
+his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall into line,
+but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an interesting
+struggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that
+of Francie's accepted suitor, and then the liberality would have Francie
+and not himself for its object. This reasoning naturally didn't lessen
+his impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his
+profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side now ached
+together in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her
+words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a moment flush to
+his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could scarcely have
+said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued
+with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her he had brains,
+heart and material proofs of a college education. To this she replied
+that if he didn't leave her alone she should cry--and how would he like
+that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He answered "Damn
+the others!" but it didn't help his case, and at last he broke out:
+"Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you've promised Miss
+Delia?" Francie returned that she hadn't promised Miss Delia anything,
+and her companion went on: "Of course I know what she has got in her
+head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand monde, as they
+call it here; but I didn't suppose you'd let her fix your life for you.
+You were very different before HE turned up."
+
+"She never fixed anything for me. I haven't got any life and I don't
+want to have any," Francie veraciously pleaded. "And I don't know who
+you're talking about either!"
+
+"The man without a country. HE'LL pass you in--that's what your sister
+wants."
+
+"You oughtn't to abuse him, because it was you that presented him," the
+girl pronounced.
+
+"I never presented him! I'd like to kick him."
+
+"We should never have seen him if it hadn't been for you," she
+maintained.
+
+"That's a fact, but it doesn't make me love him any better. He's the
+poorest kind there is."
+
+"I don't care anything about his kind."
+
+"That's a pity if you're going to marry him right off! How could I know
+that when I took you up there?"
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Flack," said Francie, trying to gain ground from him.
+
+This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: "Will
+you keep me as a friend?"
+
+"Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!" cried the easy creature.
+
+"All right," he replied; and they presently overtook their companions.
+
+
+
+V
+
+Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow
+whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him
+something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have
+been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of
+showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad
+joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow
+scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him by
+throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing
+ghost of it, was in Waterlow's "manner," but it had not made its mark on
+his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and
+pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general
+sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could
+still swell his sail in any "vital" discussion with a friend in whose
+life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused
+Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and
+he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family
+among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow's sense, as the
+phrase is, improved upon the "Latin" ideal. That did injustice--and this
+the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the
+different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all
+for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion,
+and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what
+Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them
+enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming
+parts, held that the best way hadn't been taken to make a man of him,
+and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair
+that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in
+freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the
+Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island,
+where the seeds of his strictness had been sown.
+
+Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried
+him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at fault--
+was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. He
+should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute were
+he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy things
+all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for Waterlow
+to say that to be a "real" man it was necessary to be a little of a
+brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. The
+difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter
+declared that all would be easy if such account hadn't to be taken of
+the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess.
+These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston
+explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the
+other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of
+which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the
+summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together
+on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they
+were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared,
+according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for
+the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the
+number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star,
+seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at
+Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he
+had dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dosson
+or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as it
+had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their
+separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects
+appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking
+of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner
+at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow
+himself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that she
+showed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem.
+
+In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began
+to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward
+the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the
+lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the
+representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always
+there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the
+newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant
+learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his
+journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the
+young ladies had gone--and when he didn't go with them; he accompanied
+them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of
+his friend's work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that
+rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the
+canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too
+well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with
+her in that fashion he mightn't have wanted to deal in any other. She
+bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist
+had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in
+which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had
+required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and
+somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was
+no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in
+December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made a
+comment. "I'll do anything in the world you like--anything you think
+will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you
+don't go to them and say: 'I've seen a girl who is as good as cake and
+pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I've taken time to think of it and
+I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you
+happen to like her so much the better; if you don't be so good as to
+keep it to yourselves.' That's much the most excellent way. Why in the
+name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?"
+
+"Oh you don't understand, you don't understand!" sighed Gaston, who had
+never pulled so long a face. "One can't break with one's traditions in
+an hour, especially when there's so much in them that one likes. I
+shan't love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and I
+care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I've
+everything to consider--and I'm glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her
+will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall
+greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round."
+
+There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary of
+his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the "acceptance" by any
+one but himself of the woman he loved. One's own acceptance--of one's
+bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round
+those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the
+highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his
+relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in
+her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her
+acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such
+malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual
+line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her
+appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an
+oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge
+should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His
+sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break her
+in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his
+favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most
+Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans les
+idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was
+capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She
+had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for
+those of others. She wouldn't like the Dossons superficially any better
+than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by
+their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends
+and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was a
+good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of beauty
+and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She
+appreciated highly Charles Waterlow's talent and there had been talk of
+her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project
+with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out.
+
+According to Gaston's plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to
+see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have
+worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on
+the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow's powers, and
+not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he
+had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to
+mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was
+as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing
+this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming
+impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid
+curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a
+creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she
+would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give
+her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn't let the
+opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn't go with
+her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything
+much depended on that, but it couldn't fail. The girl would have to take
+her, but the girl could be trusted, especially if she didn't know who
+the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so
+blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant
+light-coloured  eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal
+the visitor's identity only after she had gone. That was a condition
+indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an
+odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he would
+acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been captivated--
+the question of how Francie would be affected received in advance no
+consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and convince her
+that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be managed for
+her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper character;
+and in short the plot would thicken.
+
+Gaston's forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could
+analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make
+his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with
+the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to
+follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow's face--she had
+no opinions behind people's backs--about his mastery of his craft; she
+could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all
+her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself;
+her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns.
+Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it
+was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was
+that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her
+brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was
+after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family for
+a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of
+newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were
+celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had
+never been disastrously exposed.
+
+"But she must be charming, your young lady," she said to Gaston while
+she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie's
+image. "She's a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something
+of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon." The young men exchanged a glance, for
+this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a
+detached way that the girl was well worth seeing.
+
+He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she
+would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she
+greeted him with were: "But she's admirable--votre petite--admirable,
+admirable!" There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment
+--old Mme. d'Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the object of
+such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions and was
+attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his young
+friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of view of
+her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical and
+critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly,
+rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: she
+belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person
+sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling
+complexion or the finest eyes in the world.
+
+"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette merveille?" she enquired; to which Mme.
+de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had
+somewhere dug up. "And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?"
+Mme. d'Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to
+read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of
+breaking out: "I propose to marry it--there!" But he contained himself,
+only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which
+she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked
+as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. "Ah that
+may take you far!" their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the
+young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she
+seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it
+would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from
+accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if
+Waterlow's charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been
+frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of
+sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little
+American accidentally encountered couldn't possibly have. "Why should
+she be frightened? She wouldn't be even if she had known who I was; much
+less therefore when I was nothing for her."
+
+"Oh you weren't nothing for her!" the brooding youth declared; and when
+his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking
+fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned;
+he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his
+father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted
+them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she had
+been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested
+that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered
+that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in
+another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about
+and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: "I want you to
+treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I'm thinking of
+bringing her into the family."
+
+"Mercy on us--you haven't proposed for her?" cried Mme. de Brecourt.
+
+"No, but I've sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells
+me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty."
+
+"Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?"
+
+"Her head's rather out of drawing, but it isn't a part of the affair.
+She's very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me."
+
+"For heaven's sake then keep quiet. She's as common as a dressmaker's
+bill."
+
+"Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie.
+You couldn't find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie's
+exquisite, and now you'll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it
+all; since you HAVE such a free mind."
+
+"Do you call her by her little name like that?" Mme. de Brecourt asked,
+giving him another cup of tea.
+
+"Only to you. She's perfectly simple. It's impossible to imagine
+anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object
+before one's eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for
+life."
+
+Mme. Brecourt's lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had
+carried a pair of horns. "My poor child, what are you thinking of? You
+can't pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes
+along. You know I hoped you wouldn't marry at all--what a pity I think
+it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what's her
+name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won't. We can't DO that sort of
+thing!"
+
+"I shall marry her then," the young man returned, "without your leave
+given!"
+
+"Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you've always had
+it, you're used to it and depend on it, it's a part of your life--you'll
+hate her like poison at the end of a month."
+
+"I don't care then. I shall have always had my month."
+
+"And she--poor thing?"
+
+"Poor thing exactly! You'll begin to pity her, and that will make you
+cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you
+find out how adorable she is. Then you'll like her, then you'll love
+her, then you'll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right
+thing for ME, I've had, and we shall all be happy together again."
+
+"But how can you possibly know, with such people," Mme. de Brecourt
+demanded, "what you've got hold of?"
+
+"By having a feeling for what's really, what's delicately good and
+charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try
+to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the
+girl's an exquisite fact, she'll PREVAIL, and it will be better to
+accept her than to let her accept you."
+
+Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he
+knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he
+didn't mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were
+the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many
+examples. To this his sister had replied: "Papa will never listen to
+that."
+
+"Listen to what?"
+
+"To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela
+se fait."
+
+"Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he'll know perfectly
+whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That's the sort of thing he
+does know. And he knows quite as well that I'm very difficult to place."
+
+"You'll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you," Mme. de Brecourt
+laughed, "to replace!"
+
+"Always at any rate to find a wife for. I'm neither fish nor flesh. I've
+no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What
+position under the sun do I confer? There's a fatuity in our talking as
+if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui
+prend mari prend pays, and you've names about which your husbands take a
+great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!"
+
+"As a family nous sommes tres-bien," said Mme. de Brecourt. "You know
+what we are--it doesn't need any explanation. We're as good as anything
+there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you
+like."
+
+"Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a
+Frenchwoman."
+
+"Thank you, my dear"--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head.
+
+"No sister of mine's really French," returned the young man.
+
+"No brother of mine's really mad. Marry whomever you like," Susan went
+on; "only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a
+gentlewoman. Trust me, I've studied life. That's the only thing that's
+safe."
+
+"Francie's the equal of the first lady in the land."
+
+"With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!"
+
+"What's the matter with her hat?"
+
+"The sister's told a story. It was a document--it described them, it
+classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!"
+
+"My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don't even know how
+bad yours is," the young man went on with assurance.
+
+"Well, I don't say 'Parus' and I never asked an Englishman to marry me.
+You know what our feelings are," his companion as ardently pursued; "our
+convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we
+may be pretentious, we mayn't be able to say on what it all rests; but
+there we are, and the fact's insurmountable. It's simply impossible for
+us to live with vulgar people. It's a defect, no doubt; it's an immense
+inconvenience, and in the days we live in it's sadly against one's
+interest. But we're made like that and we must understand ourselves.
+It's of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as
+of mine or of that of the others. Don't make a mistake about it--you'll
+prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We
+suffer, we go through tortures, we die!"
+
+The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady's voice, but her
+brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in
+several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. "I shall come
+to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this
+hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any
+one."
+
+Mme. de Brecourt's eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the
+door. "What do you mean by her father's being certainly rich? That's
+such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?"
+
+"Ah that's a question SHE would never ask!" her brother cried as he left
+her.
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas
+beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman's private room at the Hotel de
+l'Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their
+father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris,
+but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when
+you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn't meet people on
+the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good
+gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not
+yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr.
+Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient
+and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent
+amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and
+the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in
+the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson,
+little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource,
+on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a
+smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at
+the bankers' where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to
+himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his
+daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de
+Villiers.
+
+This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies
+clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their
+faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and
+aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie's lover had
+written to Delia that he desired half an hour's private conversation
+with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience
+forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so
+good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to
+keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter.
+
+"Well, sir, what have you got to show?" asked Francie's father, leaning
+far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very
+little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on
+each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat.
+
+"To show, sir--what do you mean?"
+
+"What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?"
+
+"Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to
+satisfy yourself on that point. My income's derived from three sources.
+First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my
+poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of
+ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which
+he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the
+War."'
+
+"The war--what war?" asked Mr. Dosson.
+
+"Why the Franco-German--"
+
+"Oh THAT old war!" And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. "Well?" he mildly
+continued.
+
+"Then my father's so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day
+I shall have more--from him."
+
+Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. "Why, you seem to have
+fixed it so you live mostly on other folks."
+
+"I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!" This was spoken with some
+vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said
+something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no
+sharpness.
+
+"Well, I guess there won't be any trouble about that. And what does my
+daughter say?"
+
+"I haven't spoken to her yet."
+
+"Haven't spoken to the person most interested?"
+
+"I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first."
+
+"Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick
+enough," Francie's father just a little dryly stated. There was an
+element of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question
+about his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge.
+
+"How will you feel if she won't have you after you've exposed yourself
+this way to me?" Mr. Dosson went on.
+
+"Well, I've a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I
+think she likes me personally, but what I'm afraid of is that she may
+consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my people--
+she  doesn't know what may be before her."
+
+"Do you mean your family--the folks at home?" said Mr. Dosson. "Don't
+you believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia's
+thorough!"
+
+"Well, we're very simple kindly respectable people, as you'll see in a
+day or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the
+honour to wait upon you," the young man announced with a temerity the
+sense of which made his voice tremble.
+
+"We shall be very happy to see them, sir," his host cheerfully returned.
+"Well now, let's see," the good gentleman socially mused. "Don't you
+expect to embrace any regular occupation?"
+
+Gaston smiled at him as from depths. "Have YOU anything of that sort,
+sir?"
+
+"Well, you have me there!" Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. "It doesn't
+seem as if I required anything, I'm looked after so well. The fact is
+the girls support me."
+
+"I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me," said Gaston Probert.
+
+"You're prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she's
+accustomed?" And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient
+speculation.
+
+"Well, I don't think she'll miss anything. That is if she does she'll
+find other things instead."
+
+"I presume she'll miss Delia, and even me a little," it occurred to Mr.
+Dosson to mention.
+
+"Oh it's easy to prevent that," the young man threw off.
+
+"Well, of course we shall be on hand." After which Mr. Dosson continued
+to follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. "You'll
+continue to reside in Paris?"
+
+"I'll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are
+here--that's a great tie. I'm not without hope that it may--with time--
+become a reason for your daughter," Gaston handsomely wound up.
+
+"Oh any reason'll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?" Mr.
+Dosson added, looking at his watch.
+
+They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the meals
+of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the young
+man stopped his companion. "I can't tell you how kind I think it--the
+way you treat me, and how I'm touched by your confidence. You take me
+just as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word."
+
+"Well, Mr. Probert," said his host, "if we didn't like you we wouldn't
+smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn't be any good. And
+since we do like you there ain't any call for them either. I trust my
+daughters; if I didn't I'd have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and
+they trust you, it's the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain't it?"
+
+"I guess it is!" Gaston delightedly smiled.
+
+His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. "Now are you
+very sure?"
+
+"I thought I was, but you make me nervous."
+
+"Because there was a gentleman here last year--I'd have put my money on
+HIM."
+
+Gaston wondered. "A gentleman--last year?"
+
+"Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit
+it off with her."
+
+"Seigneur Dieu!" Gaston Probert murmured under his breath.
+
+Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the
+small dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast.
+"Where are the chickens?" he disappointedly asked. His visitor at first
+supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but
+recognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These
+young ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor
+for her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a
+shock--the idea of the newspaper-man's personal success with so rare a
+creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eye
+convinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack.
+
+That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sister
+that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated the
+expression with her so markedly looser grasp, "You can send him a note
+saying you won't," Delia explained.
+
+"Won't marry him?"
+
+"Gracious, no! Won't go to see his sister. You can tell him it's her
+place to come to see you first."
+
+"Oh I don't care," said Francie wearily.
+
+Delia judged this with all her weight. "Is that the way you answered him
+when he asked you?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know. He could tell you best."
+
+"If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I'd have said 'Oh well, if
+you don't want it any more than that--!'"
+
+"Well, I wish it WAS you," said Francie.
+
+"That Mr. Probert was me?"
+
+"No--that you were the one he's after."
+
+"Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?" her sister suddenly
+broke out.
+
+"No, not much."
+
+"Well then what's the matter?"
+
+"You've ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what's due
+and what ain't. You could meet them all," Francie opined.
+
+But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. "Why how can you say, when
+that's just what I'm trying to find out!"
+
+"It doesn't matter anyway; it will never come off," Francie went on.
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"He'll give me up in a few weeks. I'll be sure to do something."
+
+"Do something--?"
+
+"Well, that will break the charm," Francie sighed with the sweetest
+feeblest fatalism.
+
+"If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!" Delia
+declared. "ARE you thinking of George Flack?" she repeated in a moment.
+
+"Oh do leave him alone!" Francie answered in one of her rare
+irritations.
+
+"Then why are you so queer?"
+
+"Oh I'm tired!"--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was the
+simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to
+devote to the question of Gaston's not having, since their return to
+Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them.
+She was overdone with Delia's theories on this subject, which varied,
+from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American
+friends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their
+grandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day
+upon the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a
+blaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea
+that they ought to make certain of Gaston's omissions the ground of a
+challenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that they
+ought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither
+doctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy and
+uneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a state of
+native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on his
+domestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more because
+of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he and his
+father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in that
+application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of high
+fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert's daughters, very often, and she
+therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most he
+had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if once they
+should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what he
+meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem to
+them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: something
+exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had
+dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From
+the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join
+hands and dance round her. Francie's answer to this ingenuity was that
+she didn't know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt
+on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of
+which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut,
+to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for many
+things in truth were dark to him. He couldn't see his father
+fraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn't see Margaret and Jane
+recognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He had
+answered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this only
+just failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope he
+founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answer
+to the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her first
+judgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken her
+in, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his heart had
+been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl's slow
+sweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview with
+Francie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour she
+should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she would
+believe she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. He
+would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she would
+take it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a little
+back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superior
+flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted him
+even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready in
+this forecast for fifty fibs.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good and
+that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters
+alighted successively at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham.
+Francie's visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the
+fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a
+call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and
+kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering
+with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already
+sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying
+things as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason,
+among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had
+dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father's, reflecting
+with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister
+Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact--she had
+three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near
+him in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, Maxime
+de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originally
+supposed, Mme. de Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took
+that little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave
+way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her
+long face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was
+intensely united, as we see; but that didn't prevent Mme. de Brecourt's
+having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, and
+she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been a well-
+constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high sea.
+It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that
+especially brought her out; then she began her long stories about her
+complicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience.
+Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours
+la Reine; it reminded her of her mother's life and her young days and
+her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into
+the world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father's
+kindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of a
+linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to pop
+in and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she had
+done when she was a girl. She broke into her sister's confidences now;
+she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely.
+
+Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston
+turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a
+mortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr.
+Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them
+another visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by
+her husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston,
+by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full
+of anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the
+family, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of
+crude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with
+thick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabots
+with straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing that
+he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the
+quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had
+ever ventured to clear up this point by a question. "La famille c'est
+moi" appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--he
+had very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptral air.
+Mme. de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in
+confirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon:
+she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked back
+to the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as far
+away. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the
+Vendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected
+and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or
+reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote roy
+and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly
+restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had
+extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, and
+viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that is
+not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as
+grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law,
+cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to her,
+that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a
+dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation
+that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt's
+eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn't payer de mine--they fairly
+smelt of their province; "but for the reality of the thing," she often
+said to herself, "they're worth all of us. We're diluted and they're
+pure, and any one with an eye would see it." "The thing" was the
+legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, the
+unconscious, grand air.
+
+The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks,
+as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin
+drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and
+proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston's
+relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn't do.
+The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably
+never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts.
+Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for
+him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the
+worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to
+it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it.
+"Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we've done
+for him:" Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had
+expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from
+which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with
+great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for
+him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he
+showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter
+quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was
+impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her.
+He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he
+held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from
+the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his
+private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr.
+Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account
+for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of
+familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on with
+them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could
+do that even if one couldn't converse with them. He succeeded in making
+Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick
+inflammability. "Yes," she said, "we must insist on their positive, not
+on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored,
+their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming
+primitive instincts--we must work those!" And the brother and sister
+excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must
+be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm
+the depth of their responsibility.
+
+On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham
+with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine,
+without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of
+Mr. Probert's, with Gaston's rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la
+Concorde.
+
+"We should have to have them to dinner." The young man noted his
+father's conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not
+yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had not
+made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down
+more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the
+immense luck that it hadn't been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds;
+which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could
+bear French noise but couldn't for the life of him bear American. As for
+English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a
+country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson
+had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was
+exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched it
+--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie's lover knew moreover--
+though he was a little disappointed that no charmed exclamation should
+have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the girl's rare spell
+had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn't have liked her.
+
+"Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon," he replied. "They'll like it
+so much."
+
+"And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?"
+
+"Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have
+later."
+
+"All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM," said
+Mr. Probert. Then he added: "Poor creatures!" The fine ironic humane
+sound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his
+father's arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender
+allowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce
+French critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. The
+meeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerce
+any more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder's hinted
+pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really
+what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had
+prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some of
+them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice
+inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous
+deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old
+darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe.
+When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: "I
+think you told me you're dining out."
+
+"Yes, with our friends."
+
+"'Our friends'? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your
+return; but not later than half-past ten."
+
+From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found
+it refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This
+reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he
+himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through,
+but he couldn't bear to think of that, and the sense of the further
+arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The
+dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this
+state of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said,
+about his poppa.
+
+"Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!" Delia
+declared. "That's my idea of a real gentleman."
+
+"Ah for that--!" said Gaston.
+
+"He's too sweet for anything. I'm not a bit afraid of him," Francie
+contributed.
+
+"Why in the world should you be?"
+
+"Well, I am of you," the girl professed.
+
+"Much you show it!" her lover returned.
+
+"Yes, I am," she insisted, "at the bottom of all."
+
+"Well, that's what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master."
+
+"Well, I don't know; I'm more afraid than that. You'll see."
+
+"I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense," said happy Gaston.
+
+Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor;
+he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his
+prospective son-in-law's perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew
+this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn't at all mean
+he hadn't been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing
+had been given him; he hadn't, like his so differently-appointed young
+friend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his
+life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no
+history with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be
+continuous, and Mr. Probert's appearance had neither founded a state nor
+produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his
+father he would have said at the most: "Oh I guess he's all right!" But
+what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston's view was the
+attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others,
+Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, who
+had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the
+gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have
+been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had
+not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession,
+and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long
+historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels
+and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly
+little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when
+they told her that the whole maniere d'etre of her family inspired them
+with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche
+had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old
+noblesse of France. It wouldn't have occurred to the girl that such
+things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover,
+whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in
+a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken
+for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; he
+noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover
+pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and
+corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people
+should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a
+high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without
+sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their
+settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and
+the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence
+was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt:
+there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with his
+father's request by returning to the room in which the old man
+habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses.
+"Of course you'll continue to live with me. You'll understand that I
+don't consent to your going away. You'll have the rooms occupied at
+first by Susan and Alphonse."
+
+Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the
+future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in
+a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This
+proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very
+serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, of
+institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more
+particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat
+there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight
+shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had
+used of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectly
+aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little
+frivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--except
+perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were all
+social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family
+had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of
+conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly
+tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flew
+about through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before the
+chimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew,
+especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often
+been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that
+enjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was
+so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate.
+His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually
+not more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an "Ah
+you know, what will you have?"); but he had been none the less a part of
+the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them over the
+river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profaned
+shrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert's
+pleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large,
+though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knew
+the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most
+salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother,
+and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the old
+boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and
+sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the place
+she had held in his father's life and affection, and the terms on which
+they had grown up together--her people had been friends of his
+grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a
+young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time
+of Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying his
+sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertions
+were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a
+society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would
+have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said to
+that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the
+fountain; they hadn't left their own behind them in Carolina; it had
+been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in
+Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was
+by nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why they
+let him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the
+conciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de
+Marignac, who had been her friend too, the young man's mother's, he was
+gentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him to
+care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the true
+faith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifference
+doubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation.
+
+"We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us," his son said. "We
+shall fill out the house a little, and won't that be rather an
+improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?"
+
+"You'll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the
+other girl."
+
+"Ah Francie won't give up her father and sister, certainly; and what
+should you think of her if she did? But they're not intrusive; they're
+essentially modest people; they won't put themselves upon us. They have
+great natural discretion," Gaston declared.
+
+"Do you answer for that? Susan does; she's always assuring one of it,"
+Mr. Probert said. "The father has so much that he wouldn't even speak to
+me."
+
+"He didn't, poor dear man, know what to say."
+
+"How then shall I know what to say to HIM?"
+
+"Ah you always know!" Gaston smiled.
+
+"How will that help us if he doesn't know what to answer?"
+
+"You'll draw him out. He's full of a funny little shade of bonhomie."
+
+"Well, I won't quarrel with your bonhomme," said Mr. Probert--"if he's
+silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady,
+though she's evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funny
+little shade. It's not for ourselves I'm afraid; it's for them. They'll
+be very unhappy."
+
+"Never, never!" said Gaston. "They're too simple. They'll remain so.
+They're not morbid nor suspicious. And don't you like Francie? You
+haven't told me so," he added in a moment.
+
+"She talks about 'Parus,' my dear boy."
+
+"Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it.
+I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French;
+she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good
+as her English."
+
+"That oughtn't to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she's very
+pretty and I'm sure she's good. But I won't tell you she is a marvel,
+because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point of
+view and your own experience everything--that I've seen beauties without
+number. I've known the most charming women of our time--women of an
+order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to
+belong. I'm difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when you
+pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a
+miracle, feel how standards alter. J'ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher.
+However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost
+one's enthusiasm everything's the same and one might as well perish by
+the sword as by famine."
+
+"I hoped she'd fascinate you on the spot," Gaston rather ruefully
+remarked.
+
+"'Fascinate'--the language you fellows use! How many times in one's life
+is one likely to be fascinated?"
+
+"Well, she'll charm you yet."
+
+"She'll never know at least that she doesn't: I'll engage for that,"
+said Mr. Probert handsomely.
+
+"Ah be sincere with her, father--she's worth it!" his son broke out.
+
+When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a
+fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more
+provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for
+he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather
+stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine
+perceptions one didn't have: so far from its showing experience it
+showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she
+was just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were
+no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn't know what old frumps
+his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in
+front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point
+suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could
+remember Mme. de Marignac's Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with
+Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that
+milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and  recited, the
+pictures, great  heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the
+lady of the house in  different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a
+Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies
+the public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad,
+Canova's--make their authors burrow in holes for shame.
+
+"And what else is she worth?" Mr. Probert asked after a momentary
+hesitation.
+
+"How do you mean, what else?"
+
+"Her immense prospects, that's what Susan has been putting forward.
+Susan's insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you
+mind my speaking of them?"
+
+Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance  of Jane's
+having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he
+were under an obligation to it. "To whom, sir?" he asked.
+
+"Oh only to you."
+
+"You can't do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the
+question of money and he was splendid. We can't be more mercenary than
+he."
+
+"He waived the question of his own, you mean?" said Mr. Probert.
+
+"Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right." The young man flattered
+himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of
+pecuniary convenience.
+
+"Well, it's your affair--or your sisters'," his father returned.
+
+"It's their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of
+it."
+
+"It's very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they'd
+be tired of their own chatter," Gaston impatiently sighed.
+
+Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: "I
+think they are. However, the period of discussion's closed. We've taken
+the jump." He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly:
+"Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion."
+
+"Of my opinion?"
+
+"That she's charming."
+
+"Confound them then, I'm not of theirs!" The form of this rejoinder was
+childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it
+belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an
+old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace
+it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had
+been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from
+protest at Gaston's petulance was the more generous as he was capable,
+for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole
+connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel.
+Gaston didn't care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself
+in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This
+was especially the case as his father's mention of the approval of two
+of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on
+the part of the third. Francie's lover cared as little whether she
+displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and
+Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was
+with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of
+discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but he
+managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain
+importance to be made. "It seems rather odd to me that you should all
+appear to accept the step I'M about to take as a necessity disagreeable
+at the best, when I myself hold that I've been so exceedingly
+fortunate."
+
+Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on the
+fire. "You won't be content till we're enthusiastic. She seems an
+amiable girl certainly, and in that you're fortunate."
+
+"I don't think you can tell me what would be better--what you'd have
+preferred," the young man said.
+
+"What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that
+I wasn't madly impatient to see you married."
+
+"I can imagine that, and yet I can't imagine that as things have turned
+out you shouldn't be struck with my felicity. To get something so
+charming and to get it of our own species!" Gaston explained.
+
+"Of our own species? Tudieu!" said his father, looking up.
+
+"Surely it's infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry an
+American. There's a sad want of freshness--there's even a provinciality
+--in the way we've Gallicised."
+
+"Against Americans I've nothing to say; some of them are the best thing
+the world contains. That's precisely why one can choose. They're far
+from doing all like that."
+
+"Like what, dear father?"
+
+"Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise
+what they are, one wouldn't look at them."
+
+"Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities."
+
+"Well, perhaps they'll do for queer fish," said Mr. Probert with a
+little conclusive sigh.
+
+"Yes, let them pass at that. They'll surprise you."
+
+"Not too much, I hope!" cried the old man, opening his volume again.
+
+The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn't nevertheless
+startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston to
+proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful
+circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some
+three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under
+this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear
+herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the
+Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts
+some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every
+one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson's designs and Delia's took no
+articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future
+wife's relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that Mr.
+Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to
+"start" her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at the
+rest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed to
+"do" for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than
+anything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in
+regard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another
+convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt's bold front
+won another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that
+it was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. "Lord help
+us, is that what they call confidence?" the young man gasped, guessing
+the way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how they
+would look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always
+fall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their "forms"; though
+indeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear so
+striking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of their
+meddling too much.
+
+Mr. Probert's property was altogether in the United States: he resembled
+other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was
+the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging
+to make for his son's marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the
+spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only
+by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the
+sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from
+the master's eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of
+that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had
+become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and
+go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris.
+The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically
+faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had best
+wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously
+accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an
+introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an
+equal energy on Mr. Dosson's part suddenly appeared to reach and to move
+that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, to
+attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties,
+since he couldn't in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not
+only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but
+Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that
+Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal
+philosophy, wouldn't have felt his doing so square with propriety. The
+young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than,
+in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she
+herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia
+declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till
+she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from  proposing that
+she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de
+Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in
+the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of
+marked disfavour as yet to any "visiting." AFTER, if he liked, but not
+till then. And she wouldn't at the moment give the reasons of her
+refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate.
+
+All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr.
+Dosson: "I'm not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you'll coach me
+properly, and trust me, why shouldn't I rush across and transact your
+business as well as my father's?" Strange as it appeared, Francie
+offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which would
+last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of any
+member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the
+solution; he remarked "Well, sir, you've got a big brain" at the end of
+a morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made
+his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her
+justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate
+way even to Mme. de Brecourt's had been founded on a fear that in close
+quarters she might do something that would make them all despise her.
+Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the very
+delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if she
+expected never to be at close quarters with "tous les siens." "Ah yes,
+but then it will be safer," she pleaded; "then we shall be married and
+by so much, shan't we? be beyond harm." In rejoinder to which he had
+simply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lover
+took ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stopping
+for a last word at the Hotel de l'Univers et the Cheltenham on his way
+to catch the night express to London--he was to sail from Liverpool--
+Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satin saloon. The
+correspondent of the Reverberator had come back.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Mr. Flack's relations with his old friends didn't indeed, after his
+return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse a
+year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the
+situation. They had got into the high set and they didn't care about the
+past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in
+pledges now repudiated.
+
+"What's the matter all the same? Won't you come round there with us some
+day?" Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why
+the young journalist shouldn't be a welcome and easy presence in the
+Cours la Reine.
+
+Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn't he know a
+lot of people that they didn't know and wasn't it natural they should
+have their own society? The young man's treatment of the question was
+humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward.
+When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly "shed" him Mr.
+Dosson returned "Well, I guess you'll grow again!" And Francie made the
+point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew
+perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way he
+flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being a
+good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de
+Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--
+occupied many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston,
+from a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in
+their company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would
+shape, and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could
+be nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her
+father, and even to Delia, as had been his wont.
+
+But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack's nature was
+suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn't
+care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took
+what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their
+old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in
+public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look
+sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack "located" them
+somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back to
+them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance
+usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston
+because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and
+his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis,
+whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great.
+Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit;
+he had come twice to the hotel since his son's departure and had said,
+smiling and reproachful, "You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear sir!"
+The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia
+explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for
+the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any
+copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called  alone, instructed by his daughter, in
+the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card
+on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility
+of print, the words "So sorry!" Her father had told her he would give in
+the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing.
+There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert's remark was an
+allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his sons-in-
+law. Oughtn't Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not simply
+through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their wives,
+on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject came up
+in George Flack's presence the old man said he would go round if Mr.
+Flack would accompany him. "All right, we'll go right along!" Mr. Flack
+had responded, and this nspiration had become a living fact qualified
+only by the "mercy," to Delia Dosson, that the other two gentlemen were
+not at home. "Suppose they SHOULD get in?" she had said lugubriously to
+her sister.
+
+"Well, what if they do?" Francie had asked.
+
+"Why the count and the marquis won't be interested in Mr. Flack."
+
+"Well then perhaps he'll be interested in them. He can write something
+about them. They'll like that"
+
+"Do you think they would?" Delia had solemnly weighed it.
+
+"Why, yes, if he should say fine things."
+
+"They do like fine things," Delia had conceded. "They get off so many
+themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it's a different style."
+
+"Well, people like to be praised in any style."
+
+"That's so," Delia had continued to brood.
+
+One afternoon, coming in about three o'clock, Mr. Flack found Francie
+alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours of
+independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally
+missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its
+usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr.
+Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of
+the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a landau
+as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the
+dressmaker's, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the
+progress of her sister's wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in
+composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much
+the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing
+at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she
+shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to
+her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she
+was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and
+there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty to
+Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of "recess
+time" in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor.
+
+She hadn't quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the
+bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a
+practical human limit.
+
+"I wouldn't have ventured," he observed on entering, "to propose this,
+but I guess I can do with it now it's come."
+
+"What can you do with?" she asked, wiping her pen.
+
+"Well this happy chance. Just you and me together."
+
+"I don't know what it's a chance for."
+
+"Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It
+makes me so to see you look so happy."
+
+"It makes you miserable?"--Francie took it gaily but guardedly.
+
+"You ought to understand--when I say something so noble." And settling
+himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: "Well, how do you get on
+without Mr. Probert?"
+
+"Very well indeed, thank you." The tone in which the girl spoke was not
+an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his
+enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in
+his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He
+was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn't in his interest to
+strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear a
+real reliable "gentleman friend." At the same time he was not
+indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of a
+good fellow once badly "sold," which would always give him a certain
+pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. "Well, you're in
+the real 'grand' old monde now, I suppose," he resumed at last, not with
+an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but
+detached wistfulness.
+
+"Oh I'm not in anything; I'm just where I've always been."
+
+"I'm sorry; I hoped you'd tell me a good lot about it," said Mr. Flack,
+not with levity.
+
+"You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it
+for?"
+
+Well, he took some trouble for his reason. "Dear Miss Francie, a poor
+devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things
+has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to
+do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see."
+
+She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. "What do you want to
+study-up?"
+
+"Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I
+try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to
+sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can buy.
+I hoped YOU'D have something to tell--for I'm not talking now of
+anything but THAT. I don't believe but what you've seen a good deal of
+new life. You won't pretend they ain't working you right in, charming as
+you are."
+
+"Do you mean if they've been kind and sweet to me? They've been very
+kind and sweet," Francie mid. "They want to do even more than I'll let
+them."
+
+"Ah why won't you let them?" George Flack asked almost coaxingly.
+
+"Well, I do, when it comes to anything," the girl went on. "You can't
+resist them really; they've got such lovely ways."
+
+"I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways," her
+companion observed after a silence.
+
+"Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don't
+see why it should interest you."
+
+"Don't I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn't I tell
+you that once?"--he put it very straight.
+
+"Well, you were foolish ever, and you'd be foolish to say it again,"
+Francie replied.
+
+"Oh I don't want to say anything, I've had my lesson. But I could listen
+to you all day." Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and
+incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: "Don't you remember what you told me
+that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I
+might remain your friend."
+
+"Well, that's all right," said the girl.
+
+"Then ain't we interested in the development of our friends--in their
+impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like
+me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to
+know the world."
+
+"Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?" Francie beautifully
+gaped.
+
+"About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it's difficult to
+get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you've done."
+
+"What do you mean? What measures have I done?"
+
+"Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing.
+Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don't
+you think I ought to know?" smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. "I
+thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They're a
+society apart, and they must be very curious."
+
+"Yes, they're very curious," Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then
+she said: "Do you want to put them in the paper?"
+
+George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid,
+suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. "Oh I'm very careful
+about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don't
+you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the
+right way and of the right brand. If I can't get it in the shape I like
+it I don't want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight
+from the tap, is what I'm after. I don't want to hear what some one or
+other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other
+believed or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plenty
+of that flowing in, and the best part of the job's to keep it out.
+People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the
+place; there's the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: 'You've
+got to do something first, then I'll see; or at any rate you've got to
+BE something!'"
+
+"We sometimes see the Reverberator. You've some fine pieces," Francie
+humanely replied.
+
+"Sometimes only? Don't they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly
+edition? I thought I had fixed that," said George Flack.
+
+"I don't know; it's usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I;
+she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can."
+
+"Well, it's all literature," said Mr. Flack; "it's all the press, the
+great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out
+first in the papers. It's the history of the age."
+
+"I see you've got the same aspirations," Francie remarked kindly.
+
+"The same aspirations?"
+
+"Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain."
+
+"Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way.
+Everything's so changed."
+
+"Are you the proprietor of the paper now?" the girl went on, determined
+not to catch this sentimental echo.
+
+"What do you care? It wouldn't even be delicate in me to tell you; for I
+DO remember the way you said you'd try and get your father to help me.
+Don't say you've forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway,
+that isn't the sort of help I want now and it wasn't the sort of help I
+meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one
+to say to me once in a while 'Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you'll
+come out all right.' You see I'm a working-man and I don't pretend to be
+anything else," Francie's companion went on. "I don't live on the
+accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I've fought
+for: I'm a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but
+there's one dark spot in it all the same."
+
+"And what's that?" Francie decided not quite at once to ask.
+
+"That it makes you ashamed of me."
+
+"Oh how can you say?" And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of
+vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as
+she had lately arrived at.
+
+"You wouldn't be ashamed to go round with me?"
+
+"Round where?"
+
+"Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last." George
+Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright
+eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he
+continued: "Then I'm not such a friend after all."
+
+She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: "Where
+would you like to go?"
+
+"You could render me a service--a real service--without any
+inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn't your portrait finished?"
+
+"Yes, but he won't give it up."
+
+"Who won't give it up?"
+
+"Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he
+should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won't change it--it's so
+lovely as it is!" Francie made a mild joke of saying.
+
+"I hear it's magnificent and I want to see it," said George Flack.
+
+"Then why don't you go?"
+
+"I'll go if you'll take me; that's the service you can render me."
+
+"Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!" Francie
+cried.
+
+"I go where I'm welcome, not where I ain't. I don't want to push into
+that studio alone; he doesn't want me round. Oh you needn't protest,"
+the young man went on; "if a fellow's made sensitive he has got to stay
+so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn't like
+newspaper-men. Some people don't, you know. I ought to tell you that
+frankly."
+
+Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. "Why if
+it hadn't been for you "--I'm afraid she said "hadn't have been"--"I'd
+never have sat to him."
+
+Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. "If it hadn't been for
+me I think you'd never have met your future husband."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her
+companion's surprise.
+
+"I only say that to remind you that after all I've a right to ask you to
+show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next
+day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as
+amply repaid. With you I shan't be afraid to go in, for you've a right
+to take any one you like to see your picture. That's the rule here."
+
+"Oh the day you're afraid, Mr. Flack--!" Francie laughed without fear.
+She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for
+he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence,
+that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more
+listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she
+winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the
+prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness
+to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at
+present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the
+attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after
+too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits.
+
+"Of course I must be quite square with you," the young man said in a
+tone that struck her as "higher," somehow, than any she had ever heard
+him use. "If I want to see the picture it's because I want to write
+about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must
+understand that in advance. I wouldn't write about it without seeing it.
+We don't DO that"--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his
+organ.
+
+"J'espere bien!" said Francie, who was getting on famously with her
+French. "Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it."
+
+"I don't know that he cares for my praise and I don't care much whether
+HE likes it or not. For you to like it's the principal thing--we must do
+with that."
+
+"Oh I shall be awfully proud."
+
+"I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you're the prettiest girl
+that has ever come over."
+
+"You may say what you like," Francie returned. "It will be immense fun
+to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow."
+
+"You're too kind," said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it
+down a moment with his glove; then he said: "I wonder if you'll mind our
+going alone?"
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"I mean just you and me."
+
+"Oh don't you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty
+times."
+
+"That'll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything
+else could make me do, that we're still old friends. I couldn't bear the
+end of THAT. I'll come at 3.15," Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet
+taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel,
+whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it
+and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a
+different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl's answer: "And now for
+instance are they very bigoted? That's one of the things I should like
+to know."
+
+"Very bigoted?"
+
+"Ain't they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father;
+what they call here the throne and the altar? And don't they want the
+throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman," Mr. Flack added.
+"And those grand ladies and all the rest of them."
+
+"They're very religious," said Francie. "They're the most religious
+people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him
+personally quite well. They're always going down to Rome."
+
+^And do they mean to introduce you to him?"
+
+"How do you mean, to introduce me?"
+
+"Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome."
+
+"Oh we're going to Rome for our voyage de noces!" said Francie gaily.
+"Just for a peep."
+
+"And won't you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won't consent to
+a Protestant one."
+
+"We're going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt
+took me to see at the Madeleine."
+
+"And will it be at the Madeleine, too?"
+
+"Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame."
+
+"And how will your father and sister like that?"
+
+"Our having it at Notre Dame?"
+
+"Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church."
+
+"Oh Delia wants it at the best place," said Francie simply. Then she
+added: "And you know poppa ain't much on religion."
+
+"Well now that's what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking
+about," Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off,
+repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp.
+
+Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the
+latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in
+relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting hen,
+so little did she know that it was right ("as" it was right Delia
+usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen
+after she was engaged.
+
+"Intimate? You wouldn't think it's very intimate if you were to see me!"
+Francie cried with amusement.
+
+"I'm sure I don't want to see you," Delia declared--the sharpness of
+which made her sister suddenly strenuous.
+
+"Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn't been for Mr. Flack we
+would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn't been for that
+picture I should never have got engaged?"
+
+"It would have been better if you hadn't, if that's the way you're going
+to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you."
+
+This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia's
+rigour. "I'm only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow."
+
+"Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?"
+
+"Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made
+him feel it. You know Gaston told us so."
+
+"He told us HE couldn't bear him; that's what he told us," said Delia.
+
+"All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,"
+Francie went on.
+
+"That's just what I do," returned the elder girl; "but things that are
+very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons."
+
+"I've others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in
+the paper about it."
+
+"About your picture?"
+
+"Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing."
+
+Delia stared a moment. "Well, I hope it will be a good one!" she said
+with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate.
+
+
+
+X
+
+When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles
+Waterlow's studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She
+enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her,
+and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston's second sister's coming all
+that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once
+more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had
+excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of
+their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about
+it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently
+as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject.
+Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the
+merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to
+say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn't make her look like
+a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the
+character in which it represented her, but he didn't think it well
+painted. "Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!" he had
+exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward
+mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The
+Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art.
+"Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!" Gaston had
+explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old
+game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow's game had already been a
+bewilderment to Mr. Probert.
+
+Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche's
+having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought
+by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a
+lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in
+fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on
+Francie's introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had
+asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl
+replied that she hadn't the least idea: her party consisted only of
+herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche's grace stiffened, taking on
+a shade that brought back Francie's sense that she was the individual,
+among all Gaston's belongings, who had pleased her least from the first.
+Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the
+second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second
+impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others
+behind it, but the girl hadn't yet arrived at them.  Mr. Waterlow
+mightn't have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was
+none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him
+the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving
+him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two
+gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the
+conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie
+replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with
+Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this
+gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the
+term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big
+editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper.
+He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest
+of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was
+Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston's being presented to her.
+Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause
+projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not
+exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston
+would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs.
+"I'm sure I don't know. I never asked him!" said Francie. "He ought to
+want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us." Soon after
+this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the
+existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached
+the door. She didn't kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed
+that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words "Adieu
+mademoiselle." She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts
+became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack
+remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were
+seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson's
+open landau--her companion said "And now where shall we go?" He spoke as
+if on their way from the hotel he hadn't touched upon the pleasant
+vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day
+was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to
+wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that
+particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:
+
+"Wherever you like, wherever you like!" And she sat there swaying her
+parasol, looking about her, giving no order.
+
+"Au Bois," said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft
+cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy
+elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. "Was that lady
+one of your new relatives?"
+
+"Do you mean one of Mr. Probert's old ones? She's his sister."
+
+"Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn't say good-
+morning to me?"
+
+"She didn't want you to remain with me. She doesn't like you to go round
+with me. She wanted to carry me off."
+
+"What has she got against me?" Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous
+calm.
+
+Francie seemed to consider a little. "Oh it's these funny French ideas."
+
+"Funny? Some of them are very base," said George Flack.
+
+His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right and
+left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great
+architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-
+fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to
+make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The
+colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything
+gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. "Well, I like Paris
+anyway!" Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness.
+
+"It's lucky for you, since you've got to live here."
+
+"I haven't got to; there's no obligation. We haven't settled anything
+about that."
+
+"Hasn't that lady settled it for you?"
+
+"Yes, very likely she has," said Francie placidly enough. "I don't like
+her so well as the others."
+
+"You like the others very much?"
+
+"Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you."
+
+"That one at the studio didn't make much of me, certainly," Mr. Flack
+declared.
+
+"Yes, she's the most haughty," Francie allowed.
+
+"Well, what is it all about?" her friend demanded. "Who are they
+anyway?"
+
+"Oh it would take me three hours to tell you," the girl cheerfully
+sighed. "They go back a thousand years."
+
+"Well, we've GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours." And George Flack
+settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. "I AM
+getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie," he went on. "It's
+many a day since I've been to the old Bois. I don't fool round much in
+woods."
+
+Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most
+agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile,
+irrelevantly but sociably: "Yes, these French ideas! I don't see how you
+can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid."
+
+"Well, they tell me you like them better after you're married."
+
+"Why after they're married they're worse--I mean the ideas. Every one
+knows that."
+
+"Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk," Francie
+said.
+
+"And do they talk a great deal?"
+
+"Well, I should think so. They don't do much else, and all about the
+queerest things--things I never heard of."
+
+"Ah THAT I'll bet my life on!" Mr. Flack returned with understanding.
+
+"Of course," his companion obligingly proceeded, "'ve had most
+conversation with Mr. Probert."
+
+"The old gentleman?"
+
+"No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it's not he that has
+told me most--it's Mme. de Brecourt. She's  great on life, on THEIR
+life--it's very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all
+their troubles and complications."
+
+"Complications?" Mr. Flack threw off. "That's what she calls them. It
+seems very different from America. It's just like a beautiful story--
+they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see--
+without being told."
+
+"What sort of things?"
+
+"Well, like Mme. de Cliche's--" But Francie paused as if for a word.
+
+Her friend was prompt with assistance. "Do you mean her complications?"
+
+"Yes, and her husband's. She has terrible ones. That's why one must
+forgive her if she's rather peculiar. She's very unhappy."
+
+"Do you mean through her husband?"
+
+"Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives."
+
+Mr. Flack's hand closed over it. "Mme. de Brives?"
+
+"Yes, she's lovely," said Francie. "She ain't very young, but she's
+fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme.
+de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can't bear Mme. de Villepreux."
+
+"Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man," George Flack moralised.
+
+"Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the
+marriage."
+
+"Who had?--against what marriage?"
+
+"When Maggie Probert became engaged."
+
+"Is that what they call her--Maggie?"
+
+"Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de
+Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her."
+
+"Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!" Mr. Flack permitted
+himself to guess. "And who's Mme. de Villepreux?" he proceeded.
+
+"She's the daughter of Mme. de Marignac."
+
+"And who's THAT old sinner?" the young man asked.
+
+"Oh I guess she's dead," said Francie. "She used to be a great friend of
+Mr. Probert--of Gaston's father."
+
+"He used to go to tea with her?"
+
+"Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her
+death."
+
+"The way they do come out with 'em!" Mr. Flack chuckled. "And who the
+mischief's Susan?"
+
+"Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. de
+Villepreux isn't so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the
+Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime."
+
+"With Maxime?"
+
+"That's M. de Cliche."
+
+"Oh I see--I see!" and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the
+top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to
+which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on
+splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the
+Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame
+painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding
+stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue
+leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene;
+he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on
+either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown
+boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to
+spend there, of the rest of Francie's pleasant prattle, of the place
+near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the
+bench where they might sit down. "I see, I see," he repeated with
+appreciation. "You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old
+monde."
+
+
+
+XI
+
+One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced
+his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused
+her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her
+against vain fears. "Please come to me the moment you've received this--
+I've sent the carriage. I'll explain when you get here what I want to
+see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here." The
+coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and
+the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if
+conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted
+into blankness on the other. "It's for something bad--something bad,"
+Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was
+unable to think what it could be.  Delia, who looked a good deal scared,
+offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a
+practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his
+daughter's alliance.
+
+"No you won't--no you won't, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but
+let them see that they can't whistle for all of us." It was the first
+sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That
+question had never troubled him.
+
+"I know what it is," said Delia while she arranged her sister's
+garments. "They want to talk about religion. They've got the priests;
+there's some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you."
+
+"Then you'd better take a waterproof!" Francie's father called after her
+as she flitted away.
+
+She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there
+for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the
+phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their
+collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was
+always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her
+in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon;
+Francie knew it as her hostess's "own room," a lovely boudoir--in which,
+considerably to the girl's relief, the rest of the family were not
+assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they
+were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile;
+she kissed her as if she didn't know she was doing it. She laughed as
+she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different
+demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon
+with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting
+beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held
+so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan's eyes were in their nature
+salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her
+head.
+
+"We're upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the
+house."
+
+"What's the matter--what's the matter?" Francie asked, pale and with
+parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out
+in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had
+been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for
+that?
+
+"You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our
+sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our
+joys are your joys and our indignations are yours."
+
+"What IS the matter, PLEASE?" the girl repeated. Their "indignations"
+opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification for
+the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the
+paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about
+herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack
+could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud of.
+Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the
+picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how
+she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-
+Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they
+sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois de
+Boulogne.
+
+"Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to
+my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal
+about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about
+poor Marguerite, calling her 'Margot,' about Maxime and Leonie de
+Villepreux, saying he's her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston,
+about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your
+dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate
+in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa's in the most awful
+state!" and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with
+the volubility of horror and passion. "You're outraged with us and you
+must suffer with us," she went on. "But who has done it? Who has done
+it? Who has done it?"
+
+"Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!" Francie quickly replied. She was appalled,
+overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to
+disavow her knowledge.
+
+"Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, he
+ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime's in an
+unspeakable rage. Everything's at end, we've been served up to the
+rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?--
+and they all so infamously false!" The poor woman poured forth her woe
+in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn't know what to ask
+first, against what to protest. "Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw
+you with at Mr. Waterlow's? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a
+feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards--walking
+with him--in the Bois."
+
+"Well, I didn't see her," the girl said.
+
+"You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that's what Margot
+remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!" wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress
+was pitiful.
+
+"She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn't let her. He's an
+old friend--a friend of poppa's--and I like him very much. What my
+father allows, that's not for others to criticise!" Francie continued.
+She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion's air of
+tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of
+an act she herself didn't know, couldn't comprehend nor measure yet. But
+there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind
+defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her
+consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it
+would appear to be some self-seeking deception.
+
+"Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil
+has he paid to tattle to him?"
+
+"You scare me awfully--you terrify me," the girl could but plead. "I
+don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen it, I don't
+understand it. Of course I've talked to Mr. Flack."
+
+"Oh Francie, don't say it--don't SAY it! Dear child, you haven't talked
+to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!" Mme. de
+Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed
+to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare.
+"You shall see the paper; they've got it in the other room--the most
+disgusting sheet. Margot's reading it to her husband; he can't read
+English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa
+tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn't, he was too sick.
+There's a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity
+about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see
+it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!"
+
+Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet.
+"And what does it say about me?"
+
+"Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the most
+odious details, and your having made a match among the 'rare old
+exclusives.' And the strangest stuff about your father--his having gone
+into a 'store' at the age of twelve. And something about your poor
+sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they
+call it, and the way we've pushed and got on and our ridiculous
+pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul's sister, who
+had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things
+in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a
+thing? It's ages ago, it's dead and buried!"
+
+"You told me, you told me yourself," said Francie quickly. She turned
+red the instant she had spoken.
+
+"Don't say it's YOU--don't, don't, my darling!" cried Mme. de Brecourt,
+who had stared and glared at her. "That's what I want, that's what you
+must do, that's what I see you this way for first alone. I've answered
+for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must
+deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--she
+has given it to the others. I've told them they ought to be ashamed,
+that it's an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I've done
+everything for the last hour to protect you. I'm your godmother, you
+know, and you mustn't disappoint me. You're incapable, and you must say
+so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE'LL have seen
+it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS
+anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you." Mme. de
+Brecourt hurried on, and her companion's bewilderment deepened to see
+how the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks.
+"You must say to my father, face to face, that you're incapable--that
+you're stainless."
+
+"Stainless?" Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb.
+But the sheep-dog had to be faced. "Of course I knew he wanted to write
+a piece about the picture--and about my marriage."
+
+"About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you're at
+the bottom of ALL!" cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away,
+falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her
+hands.
+
+"He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!" Francie
+asseverated loud. "But he seems to have printed more."
+
+"MORE? I should think so!" And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing
+before her. "And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterous
+facts?"
+
+"I told him--I told him--I don't know what. It was for his paper--he
+wants everything. It's a very fine paper," said the girl.
+
+"A very fine paper?" Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. "Have
+you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my
+brother!" she quavered again, turning away.
+
+"If your brother were here you wouldn't talk to me this way--he'd
+protect me, Gaston would!" cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her
+little muff and moving to the door.
+
+"Go away, go away or they'll kill you!" her friend went on excitedly.
+"After all I've done for you--after the way I've lied for you!" And she
+sobbed, trying to repress her sobs.
+
+Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. "I'll go home.
+Poppa, poppa!" she almost shrieked, reaching the door.
+
+"Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such
+ideas!" These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme.
+de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl,
+seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before she
+could pass out. "Hush--hush--they're coming in here, they're too
+anxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have said
+things--and such things: say it all comes from HER!"
+
+"Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?" cried Francie, shaking herself
+free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly
+to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr.
+Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and
+M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie
+had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience
+these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into
+their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood
+in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window,
+wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and
+partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one
+face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged
+expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went
+to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He
+seemed ten years older.
+
+"Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de Cliche
+slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant
+reproach.
+
+"Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?" his wife asked,
+thrusting the paper toward her. "It's quite at your service!" But as
+Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as
+it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de
+Cliche carried her head very far aloft.
+
+"She has nothing to do with it--it's just as I told you--she's
+overwhelmed," said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window.
+
+"You'd do well to read it--it's worth the trouble," Alphonse de Brecourt
+remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted
+her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they
+seemed somehow to put her in the wrong.
+
+"Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?"
+Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced
+calmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those
+who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling
+within--which made Francie draw back. "C'est pourtant rempli de choses--
+which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, great heaven!
+It's right and left--no one's spared--it's a deluge of the lowest
+insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions I had
+--I couldn't resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful as this,
+God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow's with your journalist."
+
+"I've told her everything--don't you see she's aneantie? Let her go, let
+her go!" cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the
+window.
+
+"Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!" said Maxime de
+Cliche. "I'm very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend
+of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the
+satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won't
+forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!"
+
+M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some
+powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr.
+Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to
+be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and
+she felt heroic. "If you mean Mr. Flack--I don't know what you mean,"
+she said as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. "Mr. Flack has gone
+to London."
+
+At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied:
+"Ah it's easy to go to London."
+
+"They like such things there; they do them more and more. It's as bad as
+America!" Mme. de Cliche declared.
+
+"Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You might
+explain--I'm only an American girl!" said Francie, whose being only an
+American girl didn't prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as
+high as Mme. de Cliche's.
+
+Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm.
+"You're very nervous--you'd much better go home. I'll explain everything
+to them--I'll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had orders
+to wait."
+
+"I'm not in the least nervous, but I've made you all so," Francie
+brought out with the highest spirit.
+
+"I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you're only a wretched
+victim like ourselves," M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with a
+smile. "I see the hand of a woman in it, you know," he went on to the
+others; "for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn't sink
+to--he can't, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be the
+dernier des goujats. But please don't doubt that I've maintained that
+woman not to be you."
+
+"The way you talk! _I_ don't know how to write," Francie impatiently
+quavered.
+
+"My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!" murmured Mme. de Brecourt
+with an arm round her.
+
+"There's a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so," the girl
+continued. "She's a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes what he
+tells her. I think her name's Miss Topping, but she calls herself
+Florine--or Dorine," Francie added.
+
+"Miss Dosson, you're too rare!" Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a
+long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. "Then you've been
+three to it," she went on; "that accounts for its perfection!"
+
+Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr.
+Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. "Mr.
+Probert, I'm very sorry for what I've done to distress you; I had no
+idea you'd all feel so badly. I didn't mean any harm. I thought you'd
+like it."
+
+The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking
+her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He
+didn't look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate
+sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she
+said she thought they'd like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from
+being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. "Like it--LIKE
+IT?" said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her.
+
+"What do you mean? She admits--she admits!" Mme. de Cliche exulted to
+her sister. "Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish me
+for having tried to separate you?" she pursued to the poor child, who
+stood gazing up piteously at the old man.
+
+"I don't know what he has published--I haven't seen it--I don't
+understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me," she said to
+him.
+
+"'About me'!" M. de Cliche repeated in English. "Elle est divine!" He
+turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall.
+
+Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it together,
+saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home immediately--
+then she'd see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of the room. But
+Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his sick stare.
+"You gave information for that? You desired it?"
+
+"Why _I_ didn't desire it--but Mr. Flack did."
+
+"Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?" the old man
+groaned.
+
+"I thought he'd just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr.
+Waterlow," Francie went on. "I thought he'd just speak about my being
+engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be
+interested."
+
+"So many people in America--that's just the dreadful thought, my dear,"
+said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. "Foyons, put it in your muff and tell us
+what you think of it." And she continued to thrust forward the
+scandalous journal.
+
+But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert at
+the others. "I told Gaston I'd certainly do something you wouldn't
+like."
+
+"Well, he'll believe it now!" cried Mme. de Cliche.
+
+"My poor child, do you think he'll like it any better?" asked Mme. de
+Brecourt.
+
+Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new
+wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. "He'll see it over
+there--he has seen it now."
+
+"Oh my dear, you'll have news of him. Don't be afraid!" broke in high
+derision from Mme. de Cliche.
+
+"Did HE send you the paper?" her young friend went on to Mr. Probert.
+
+"It was not directed in his hand," M. de Brecourt pronounced. "There was
+some stamp on the band--it came from the office."
+
+"Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that," Mme. de
+Brecourt suggested.
+
+"Or perhaps Florine," M. de Cliche interposed. "I should like to get
+hold of Florine!"
+
+"I DID--I did tell him so!" Francie repeated with all her fevered
+candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if
+she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence.
+
+"So did I--so did we all!" said Mme. de Cliche.
+
+"And will he suffer--as you suffer?" Francie continued, appealing to Mr.
+Probert.
+
+"Suffer, suffer? He'll die!" cried the old man. "However, I won't answer
+for him; he'll tell you himself, when he returns."
+
+"He'll die?" echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime
+who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much
+gunpowder.
+
+"He'll never return--how can he show himself?" said Mme. de Cliche.
+
+"That's not true--he'll come back to stand by me!" the girl flashed out.
+
+"How couldn't you feel us to be the last--the very last?" asked Mr.
+Probert with great gentleness. "How couldn't you feel my poor son to be
+the last--?"
+
+"C'est un sens qui lui manque!" shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche.
+
+"Let her go, papa--do let her go home," Mme. de Brecourt pleaded.
+"Surely. That's the only place for her to-day," the elder sister
+continued.
+
+"Yes, my child--you oughtn't to be here. It's your father--he ought to
+understand," said Mr. Probert.
+
+"For God's sake don't send for him--let it all stop!" And Mme. de Cliche
+made wild gestures.
+
+Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life,
+and then said: "Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan."
+
+"Give her your arm--take her to the carriage," she heard Mme. de
+Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew how--
+she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to kiss
+her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feeling as
+she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be bad
+because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn't complete that thought, yet only
+Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de Brecourt
+hurried beside her; she wouldn't take his arm. But he opened the door
+for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest and most
+unexpected manner: "You're charming, mademoiselle--charming, charming!"
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon
+at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as
+if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to
+curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience;
+he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--he
+profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst into
+the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed
+to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia,
+who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her
+face with a "Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?" Francie said
+nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what
+she would with her. "She has been crying, poppa--she HAS," Delia almost
+shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she
+continued. "Will you please tell? I've been perfectly wild! Yes you
+have, you dreadful--!" the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes.
+They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their
+troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood
+with his back to the fire.
+
+"Why, chicken," said Mr. Dosson, "you look as if you had had quite a
+worry."
+
+"I told you I should--I told you, I told you!" Francie broke out with a
+trembling voice. "And now it's come!"
+
+"You don't mean to say you've DONE anything?" cried Delia, very white.
+
+"It's all over, it's all over!" With which Francie's face braved denial.
+
+"Are you crazy, Francie?" Delia demanded. "I'm sure you look as if you
+were."
+
+"Ain't you going to be married, childie?" asked Mr. Dosson all
+considerately, but coming nearer to her.
+
+Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms
+round him. "Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right
+straight away?"
+
+"Of course I will, my precious. I'll take you anywhere. I don't want
+anything--it wasn't MY idea!" And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each
+other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder.
+
+"I never heard such trash--you can't behave that way! Has he got engaged
+to some one else--in America?" Delia threw out.
+
+"Why if it's over it's over. I guess it's all right," said Mr. Dosson,
+kissing his younger daughter. "I'll go back or I'll go on. I'll go
+anywhere you like."
+
+"You won't have your daughters insulted, I presume!" Delia cried. "If
+you don't tell me this moment what has happened," she pursued to her
+sister, "I'll drive straight round there and make THEM."
+
+"HAVE they insulted  you, sweetie?"  asked  the old man, bending over
+his child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of
+tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. "Did I
+ever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?"
+
+"Oh well, if you've done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as
+well go home, certainly. But I guess," Delia added, "you had better just
+wait till Gaston comes."
+
+"It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do."
+
+"HAVE they insulted you--have they?" Mr. Dosson repeated while the smoke
+of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it
+with placidity.
+
+"They think I've insulted THEM--they're in an awful state--they're
+almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, I don't
+know what--and they think it's too wicked. They were all there together
+--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. I
+never saw people so affected."
+
+Delia's face grew big with her stare. "So affected?"
+
+"Ah yes, I guess there's a good deal OF THAT," said Mr. Dosson.
+
+"It's too real--too terrible; you don't understand. It's all printed
+there--that they're immoral, and everything about them; everything
+that's private and dreadful," Francie explained.
+
+"Immoral, is that so?" Mr. Dosson threw off.
+
+"And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts of
+personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and
+everything. It's all printed there and they've read it. It says one of
+them steals."
+
+"Will you be so good as to tell me what you're talking about?" Delia
+enquired sternly. "Where is it printed and what have we got to do with
+it?"
+
+"Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack."
+
+"Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!" Delia cried with passion.
+
+"Do they mind so what they see in the papers?" asked Mr. Dosson. "I
+guess they haven't seen what I've seen. Why there used to be things
+about ME--"
+
+"Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it's the same as
+if I wrote it," Francie ruefully mentioned.
+
+"Well, you know what you COULD do!" And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for
+common cheer.
+
+"Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about when
+you went with him again to see it?" Delia demanded.
+
+"Oh I don't know what piece it is; I haven't seen it."
+
+"Haven't seen it? Didn't they show it to you?"
+
+"Yes, but I couldn't read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it--but
+I left it behind."
+
+"Well, that's LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track.
+I'll be bound I'd see it,"  Delia declared. "Hasn't it come, doesn't it
+always come?"
+
+"I guess we haven't had the last--unless it's somewhere round," said Mr.
+Dosson.
+
+"Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!" Delia
+continued. "Francie, what DID you want to tell him?"
+
+"I didn't know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much
+interest," Francie pleaded.
+
+"Oh he's a deep one!" groaned Delia.
+
+"Well, if folks are immoral you can't keep it out of the papers--and I
+don't know as you ought to want to," Mr. Dosson remarked. "If they ARE
+I'm glad to know it, lovey." And he gave his younger daughter a glance
+apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do.
+
+But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been
+arrested. "How do you mean--'a deep one'?"
+
+"Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!"
+
+Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled
+as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. "To break
+off my engagement?"
+
+"Yes, just that. But I'll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow
+that?"
+
+"Allow what?"
+
+"Why Mr. Flack's vile interference. You won't let him do as he likes
+with us, I suppose, will you?"
+
+"It's all done--it's all done!" said Francie. The tears had suddenly
+started into her eyes again.
+
+"Well, he's so smart that it IS likely he's too smart," her father
+allowed. "But what did they want you to do about it?--that's what _I_
+want to know?"
+
+"They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn't."
+
+"But you didn't and you don't--if you haven't even read it!" Delia
+almost yelled.
+
+"Where IS the d---d thing?" their companion asked, looking helplessly
+about him.
+
+"On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That
+old woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do go
+and get it--DO!" And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him.
+
+"I knew he wanted to print something and I can't say I didn't!" Francie
+said. "I thought he'd crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would
+like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the
+paper--he's always doing that and always was--and I didn't see the harm.
+But even just knowing him--they think that's vile."
+
+"Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!"--and Delia bounced
+fairly round as from the force of her high spirit.
+
+Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. "Why he
+kept us alive last year," he uttered in tribute.
+
+"Well, he seems to have killed us now," Delia cried.
+
+"Well, don't give up an old friend," her father urged with his hand on
+the door. "And don't back down on anything you've done."
+
+"Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!" Delia went on in her
+exasperation. "It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn't they ever
+see a society-paper before?"
+
+"They can't have seen much," said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his
+hand on the door. "Don't you worry--Gaston will make it all right."
+
+"Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!"
+
+"Is that what they say?" Delia demanded.
+
+"Gaston will never look at me again."
+
+"Well then he'll have to look at ME," said Mr. Dosson.
+
+"Do you mean that he'll give you up--he'll be so CRAWLING?" Delia went
+on.
+
+"They say he's just the one who'll feel it most. But I'm the one who
+does that," said Francie with a strange smile.
+
+"They're stuffing you with lies--because THEY don't like it. He'll be
+tender and true," Delia glared.
+
+"When THEY hate me?--Never!" And Francie shook her head slowly, still
+with her smile of softness. "That's what he cared for most--to make
+them like me."
+
+"And isn't he a gentleman, I should like to know?" asked Delia.
+
+"Yes, and that's why I won't marry him--if I've injured him."
+
+"Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes," Mr.
+Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room.
+
+The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed.
+"Well, he has got to fix it--that's one thing I can tell you."
+
+"Who has got to fix it?"
+
+"Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying
+it's all false or all a mistake."
+
+"Yes, you'd better make him," said Francie with a weak laugh. "You'd
+better go after him--down to Nice."
+
+"You don't mean to say he's gone down to Nice?"
+
+"Didn't he say he was going there as soon as he came back from London--
+going right through without stopping?"
+
+"I don't know but he did," said Delia. Then she added: "The mean
+coward!"
+
+"Why do you say that? He can't hide at Nice--they can find him there."
+
+"Are they going after him?"
+
+"They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don't know what--those men."
+
+"Well, I wish they would," said Delia.
+
+"They'd better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him,"
+Francie went on.
+
+"How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!" her
+sister engaged.
+
+Francie had a pause. "I can protect him without speaking to him. I can
+tell the simple truth--that he didn't print a word but what I told him."
+
+"I'd like to see him not!" Delia fairly hooted. "When did he grow so
+particular? He fixed it up," she said with assurance. "They always do in
+the papers--they'd be ashamed if they didn't. Well now he has got to
+bring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that's
+what he has got to do!" she wound up with decision.
+
+"Praising them up? They'll hate that worse," Francie returned musingly.
+
+Delia stared. "What on earth then do they want?"
+
+Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She
+gave no reply to this question but presently said: "We had better go to-
+morrow, the first hour that's possible."
+
+"Go where?  Do you mean to Nice?"
+
+"I don't care where. Anywhere to get away."
+
+"Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?"
+
+"I don't want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me
+just now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don't feel
+like that--I can never see him again."
+
+"I don't suppose YOU'RE crazy, are you?" Delia returned.
+
+"I can't tell him it wasn't me--I can't, I can't!" her companion went
+on.
+
+Delia planted herself in front of her. "Francie Dosson, if you're going
+to tell him you've done anything wrong you might as well stop before you
+begin. Didn't you hear how poppa put it?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," Francie said listlessly.
+
+"'Don't give up an old friend--there's nothing on earth so mean.' Now
+isn't Gaston Probert an old friend?"
+
+"It will be very simple--he'll give me up."
+
+"Then he'll be worse than a worm."
+
+"Not in the least--he'll give me up as he took me. He'd never have asked
+me to marry him if he hadn't been able to get THEM to accept me: he
+thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he'll do just
+the same. He'll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that
+he'll never choose me."
+
+"He'll never choose Mr. Flack, if that's what you mean--if you're going
+to identify yourself so with HIM!"
+
+"Oh  I  wish  he'd  never  been   born!" Francie wailed; after which she
+suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going
+to bed, and her sister took her off to her room.
+
+Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter's bedside,
+read the dreadful "piece" out to both his children from the copy of the
+Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact
+that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in
+which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their
+resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering
+effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and
+their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie's innocent remarks as a
+natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it.
+The letter from Paris appeared lively, "chatty," highly calculated to
+please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned
+Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren't aware over here of the charges
+brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. "If there
+was anything in that style they might talk," he said; and he scanned the
+effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some
+imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with
+the text was to depress Delia, who didn't exactly see what there was in
+it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some
+points they didn't understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous
+places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should
+they have minded if other people didn't understand the allusions (these
+were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did?
+The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than
+Mme. de Brecourt's account of it, and the part about her own situation
+and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than
+it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was "skimpy," and if Mr.
+Waterlow was offended it wouldn't be because they had published too much
+about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of
+things SHE hadn't told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had:
+perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine or Dorine--
+the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt's.
+
+All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at
+the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less
+than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the
+Proberts, this didn't diminish the girl's sense of responsibility nor
+make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and
+fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they
+would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion
+as she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling
+this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd
+heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got "case-hardened"
+Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things
+that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to
+do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and
+passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed
+and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she
+thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the
+papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a
+convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls'
+engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add,
+that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility
+or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime
+nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their
+blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this
+head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on
+such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show
+that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were a
+part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness of
+the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at
+night or the wind and the weather at all times.
+
+The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the
+apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear of
+what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr.
+Probert's or to Mme. de Brecourt's and reprimand them for having made
+things so rough to his "chicken." It was true she had scarcely ever seen
+him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like
+this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each
+other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one
+had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death.
+Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that those
+other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of
+superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn't command. She wanted
+nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering
+silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and
+they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance.
+Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see
+Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she
+might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these
+things wouldn't make it better--very likely they wouldn't; but at any
+rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part
+and her father's and Delia's, to make it worse. She told her father that
+she wouldn't, as Delia put it, "want to have him" go round, and was in
+some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn't seem very clear as to
+what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn't
+afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had
+happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the
+absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for
+he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the
+paper.
+
+Delia also reassured her; she said she'd see to it that poppa didn't
+sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn't the smallest
+doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down
+there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry
+he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her
+and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything
+practical to say they'd arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the
+sense of his daughter's having been roughly handled he derived some of
+the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the
+Proberts as a "body." If they were consistent with their character or
+with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he
+hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated
+to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in
+the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn't exhilarate
+this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew
+almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment
+of Gaston's horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once
+that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have
+become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at present
+strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they would
+only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust
+would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her
+knowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time.
+She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the
+business, close the incident, and all would be over.
+
+He didn't write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or
+three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New
+York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to
+say that of course he didn't write when he was on the ocean: how could
+they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--before
+he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They
+were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their
+correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to
+Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack's hand
+and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three
+intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after
+the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows:
+
+MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning,
+and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we've talked it over
+conscientiously and it appears to us that we've no right to take any
+such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn't exclusively ours but
+belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in
+as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we
+had better not touch it (it's so delicate, isn't it, my poor child?) but
+leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing
+you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been
+constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene)
+EVERYTHING should stop. But I've liked you, Francie, I've believed in
+you, and I don't wish you to be able to say that in spite of the
+thunderbolt you've drawn down on us I've not treated you with
+tenderness. It's a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but
+disastrous little friend! We're hearing more of it already--the horrible
+Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the
+unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is
+such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-
+entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for
+defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and
+Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day
+after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they
+almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have
+determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to
+be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it's best to leave
+Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one's hands off him. Have you
+anything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? But
+it's foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer
+this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, my
+dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you
+may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE
+DE  BRECOURT.
+
+Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it.
+Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn't understand it, and
+kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore
+over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of
+American travellers. They knew of Gaston's arrival by his telegraphing
+from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour--
+"about dinner-time"--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after
+dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be
+left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in
+the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference
+whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia's masterly ones,
+her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about
+imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they
+returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long
+enough to say "I told you so!" with a white face and march off to her
+room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn't get
+at her that night. It was another of Delia's inspirations not to try,
+after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise
+of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no
+wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o'clock, she had
+the energy to drag her father out to the banker's and to keep him out
+two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn't turn up
+before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o'clock he came in and
+found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale
+at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn't for an
+instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in
+her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural
+meeting. He only said as he arrived: "I couldn't come last evening; they
+made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three
+o'clock this morning." He looked as if he had been through terrible
+things, and it wasn't simply the strain of his attention to so much
+business in America. What passed next she couldn't remember afterwards;
+it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her
+hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--"Is it true,
+Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that
+blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter's only a report of
+YOUR talk?"
+
+"I told him everything--it's all me, ME, ME!" the girl replied
+exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might
+mean.
+
+Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the
+window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At
+last the young man went on: "And I who insisted to them that there was
+no natural delicacy like yours!"
+
+"Well, you'll never need to insist about anything any more!" she cried.
+And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia
+and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again
+locked in her room. But this time her sister forced an entrance.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely
+contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side
+of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his
+daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But
+the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his
+meditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies,
+though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he
+waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they
+failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to ask
+Delia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his
+daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the
+first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young
+journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a
+difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to
+demand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the mess he
+had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain the
+satisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes the
+sense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to be
+touched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored,
+let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the right
+grand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which she
+characterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if that
+can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while
+she poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. The
+same cause will according to application produce effects without
+sameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Delia
+express freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end of
+Mr. Flack's nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The best
+balm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociably
+travel over his young friend's whole person; this would have been to
+deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms he
+could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the
+girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able
+to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an
+indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her
+deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the
+Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such
+trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in
+the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a
+strained interpretation, but that didn't prevent Delia from placing it
+before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he
+should remark in return that he didn't see what good it could do Mr.
+Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be
+disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson's mind that was such a queer way of
+reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though she
+couldn't explain--and at any rate she didn't want the manoeuvring
+creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn't want him to know
+there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that
+any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published
+or didn't publish; above all she didn't want him to know that the
+Proberts had cooled off. She didn't want him to dream he could have had
+such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson's part was
+the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what
+Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position
+to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped
+that some of the people who used only to call when they were "off to-
+morrow" would take the lesson to heart.
+
+While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment
+for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by
+letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not of
+a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability
+which was the essence of the good gentleman's nature. He wanted to see
+Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to
+an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended
+itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be a
+sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own
+match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out
+an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with
+whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in
+presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn't seem to Mr. Dosson to
+disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been
+the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn't be there if the Proberts
+didn't point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn't
+turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of
+his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely
+to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a
+bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice
+was the little jerk.
+
+The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston's
+sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, to
+see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she
+received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening
+before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should
+have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she
+didn't consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that
+SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say,
+and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to the
+indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were
+explanations, assurances, de part et d'autre, with which it was
+manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would
+therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in
+patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn't propose an earlier
+moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking,
+the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had
+just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of the
+French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most
+perfidious extracts. His father hadn't stirred out of the house, hadn't
+put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime
+were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They
+couldn't face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach,
+fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible
+for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had
+appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn't virtually
+confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to
+that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the
+meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having
+caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his
+affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon.
+
+A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one
+of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it in
+her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain
+morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and
+her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister's face. The
+weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt
+the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was
+presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle
+and was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectly
+still for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which she
+heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other
+of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by
+his visit.
+
+"I saw your father downstairs--he says it's all right," said the
+journalist, advancing with a brave grin. "He told me to come straight
+up--I had quite a talk with him."
+
+"All right--ALL RIGHT?" Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. "Yes
+indeed--I should say so!" Then she checked herself, asking in another
+manner: "Is that so? poppa sent you up?" And then in still another:
+"Well, have you had a good time at Nice?"
+
+"You'd better all come right down and see. It's lovely down there. If
+you'll come down I'll go right back. I guess you want a change," Mr.
+Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed
+she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised
+herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but
+uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his
+conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing
+than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating
+points. "Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of
+anything so cheap?"
+
+"All about what?--all about what?" said Delia, whose attempt to
+represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity.
+She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in
+appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack
+to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had
+asked the young man to sit down. "I thought you were going to stay a
+month at Nice?" Delia continued.
+
+"Well, I was, but your father's letter started me up."
+
+"Father's letter?"
+
+"He wrote me about the row--didn't you know it? Then I broke. You didn't
+suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up
+here."
+
+"Gracious!" Delia panted.
+
+"Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn't it very hot now?" Francie
+rather limply asked.
+
+"Oh it's all right. But I haven't come up here to crow about Nice, have
+I?"
+
+"Why not, if we want you to?"--Delia spoke up.
+
+Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the
+eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: "Anything YOU like,
+Miss Francie. With you one subject's as good as another. Can't we sit
+down? Can't we be comfortable?" he added.
+
+"Comfortable? of course we can!" cried Delia, but she remained erect
+while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took
+possession of the nearest chair.
+
+"Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the
+plums?" George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl.
+
+She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had
+told her; and then said, more remotely, "DID father write to you?"
+
+"Of course he did. That's why I'm here."
+
+"Poor father, sometimes he doesn't know WHAT to do!" Delia threw in with
+violence.
+
+"He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for
+myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will
+go the rounds, you'll see. What brought me was learning from him that
+they HAVE got their backs up."
+
+"What on earth are you talking about?" Delia Dosson rang out.
+
+Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before;
+Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. "What game are
+you trying, Miss Delia? It ain't true YOU care what I wrote, is it?" he
+pursued, addressing himself again to Francie.
+
+After a moment she raised her eyes. "Did you write it yourself?"
+
+"What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?" Delia again
+interposed.
+
+"It has done the paper more good than anything--every one's so
+interested," said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. "And
+you don't feel you've anything to complain of, do you?" he added to
+Francie kindly.
+
+"Do you mean because I told you?"
+
+"Why certainly. Didn't it all spring out of that lovely drive and that
+walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait?
+Didn't you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would
+appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow's new picture, and about
+you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of
+the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde,
+which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie,"
+Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, "you regularly TALKED as if you did."
+
+"Did I talk a great deal?" asked Francie.
+
+"Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don't
+you remember when we sat there in the Bois?"
+
+"Oh rubbish!" Delia panted.
+
+"Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed."
+
+"And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh," he reminded
+her--"it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and I
+knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she's scandalised now--
+she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last in a
+REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it's a bigger pose than
+ever, and, as I said just now, it's too damned cheap. It's THIN--that's
+what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn't count. They pretend to be
+shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it
+first-rate."
+
+"Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn't that
+dead and buried days and days ago?" Delia quavered afresh. She hovered
+there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her
+father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a
+treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an
+uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson's part was unnatural and alarming;
+and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the
+responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his
+accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he
+want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the
+commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr.
+Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn't answer one of their
+questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn't been
+afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened
+yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving
+them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her
+conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly
+pleased she should be if he wouldn't put in his oar. She felt liberated,
+however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a
+sure proof of the state of her sister's spirit.
+
+"Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your
+father has told me?" Mr. Flack enquired. "I don't mean it was he gave me
+the tip; I guess I've seen enough over here by this time to have worked
+it out. They're scandalised all right--they're blue with horror and
+have never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie," her visitor
+roared, "that ain't good enough for you and me. They know what's in the
+papers every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They
+ain't like the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn't think how
+the apples got into the dumplings. They're just grabbing a pretext to
+break because--because, well, they don't think you're blue blood.
+They're delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they're all
+cackling over the egg it has taken so many hens of 'em to lay. That's MY
+diagnosis if you want to know."
+
+"Oh--how can you say such a thing?" Francie returned with a tremor in
+her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia's at the same
+moment, and this young woman's heart bounded with the sense that she was
+safe. Mr. Flack's power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dosson
+had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an
+untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed to
+her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her
+eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit.
+
+"What does it matter what he says, my dear?" she interposed. "Do make
+him drop the subject--he's talking very wild. I'm going down to see what
+poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!" At the door she paused
+a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: "Now just wipe him out,
+mind!" It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that
+day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could
+remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted
+out.
+
+As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. "Now look
+here, you're not going back on me, are you?"
+
+"Going back on you--what do you mean?"
+
+"Ain't we together in this thing? WHY sure! We're CLOSE together, Miss
+Francie!"
+
+"Together--together?" Francie repeated with charming wan but not at all
+tender eyes on him.
+
+"Don't you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course
+always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated to
+you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public
+behind me."
+
+"Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so.
+I never denied it," Francie brought forth.
+
+"You told them so?"
+
+"When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I told
+them I gave you the tip as you call it."
+
+She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; then
+he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. "Ah you're too
+sweet!" She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but he,
+rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was
+disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little
+before him. "They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you
+believe you had outraged them?"
+
+"All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don't like it," she said at
+her distance.
+
+"The cowards!" George Flack after a moment remarked. "And where was
+young Mr. Probert?" he then demanded.
+
+"He was away--I've told you--in America."
+
+"Ah yes, your father told me. But now he's back doesn't he like it
+either?"
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Flack," Francie answered with impatience.
+
+"Well I do then. He's a coward too--he'll do what his poppa tells him,
+and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from
+whom he takes lessons: he'll just back down, he'll give you up."
+
+"I can't talk with you about that," said Francie.
+
+"Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? You
+can't alter that," her visitor insisted. "It was too lovely your
+standing up for me--your not denying me!"
+
+"You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different,"
+she freely contended.
+
+"Everything IS different when it's printed. What else would be the good
+of the papers? Besides, it wasn't I; it was a lady who helps me here--
+you've heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to know
+you--she wants to talk with you."
+
+"And will she publish THAT?" Francie asked with unstudied effect.
+
+Mr. Flack stared a moment. "Lord, how they've worked on you! And do YOU
+think it's bad?"
+
+"Do I think what's bad?"
+
+"Why the letter we're talking about."
+
+"Well--I didn't see the point of so much."
+
+He waited a little, interestedly. "Do you think I took any advantage?"
+
+She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had
+never heard from her: "Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me
+such questions?"
+
+He hesitated; after which he broke out: "Because I love you. Don't you
+know that?"
+
+"Oh PLEASE don't!" she almost moaned, turning away.
+
+But he was launched now and he let himself go. "Why won't you understand
+it--why won't you understand the rest? Don't you see how it has worked
+round--the heartless brutes they've turned into, and the way OUR life,
+yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don't you see the damned
+sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do
+anything in the world for you?"
+
+Francie's white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign
+of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: "Why did you
+ask me so many questions that day?"
+
+"Because I always ask questions--it's my nature and my business to ask
+them. Haven't you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could?
+Don't you know they're the very foundation of my work? I thought you
+sympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did."
+
+"Well, I did," she allowed.
+
+"You put it in the dead past, I see. You don't then any more?"
+
+If this remark was on her visitor's part the sign of a rare assurance
+the girl's cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she
+even smiled; then she replied: "Oh yes I do--only not so much."
+
+"They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they'd have
+disgusted you. I don't care--even a little sympathy will do: whatever
+you've got left." He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had
+nothing for; so he went on: "There was no obligation for you to answer
+my questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word."
+
+"Really?" she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. "I
+thought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful."
+
+"Ungrateful?"
+
+"Why to you--after what you had done. Don't you remember that it was you
+who introduced us--?" And she paused with a fatigued delicacy.
+
+"Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg
+your pardon--I haven't THAT on my conscience!" Mr. Flack quite grandly
+declared.
+
+"Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--to
+his friends," she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the
+inexactness caused by her magnanimity. "That's why I thought I ought to
+tell you what you'd like."
+
+"Why, do you suppose if I'd known where that first visit of ours to
+Waterlow was going to bring you out I'd have taken you within fifty
+miles--?" He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: "Jerusalem, there's
+no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?"
+
+"Never mind what I told them."
+
+"Miss Francie," said George Flack, "if you'll marry me I'll never ask a
+question again. I'll go into some other business."
+
+"Then you didn't do it on purpose?" Francie asked.
+
+"On purpose?"
+
+"To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again."
+
+"Well, of all the blamed ideas--!" the young man gasped. "YOUR pure mind
+never gave birth to that--it was your sister's."
+
+"Wasn't it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you'd
+never consciously have been the means--"
+
+"Ah but I WAS the means!" Mr. Flack interrupted. "We must go, after all,
+by what DID happen."
+
+"Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So
+we're square, aren't we?" The term Francie used was a colloquialism
+generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none
+the less deeply seriou--serious even to pain.
+
+"We're square?" he repeated.
+
+"I don't think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye? Never!" cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a
+degree that spoke strangely of his hopes.
+
+Something in the way she repeated her "Goodbye!" betrayed her impression
+of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her
+unflattered. "Do go away!" she broke out.
+
+"Well, I'll come back very soon"--and he took up his hat.
+
+"Please don't--I don't like it." She had now contrived to put a wide
+space between them.
+
+"Oh you tormentress!" he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he
+reached it turned round.
+
+"Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--after
+this?"
+
+"Do you want to put that in the paper?"
+
+"Of course I do--and say you said it!" Mr. Flack held up his head.
+
+They stood looking at each other across the large room. "Well then--I
+ain't. There!"
+
+"That's all right," he said as he went out.
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and
+Delia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter
+that she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her
+sister that as their friend would have, first of all, information to
+give their father about the business he had transacted in America he
+wouldn't care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported this
+speech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn't in any
+hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether Mr.
+Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gaston
+might have liked it, but he didn't look as if he had had a very good
+time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him
+that if she hadn't received his assurance to the contrary she would have
+believed he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sick
+at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there
+was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr.
+Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over
+their relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitude
+on this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him in the
+morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn't
+likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeed
+wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he
+mustn't speak of the "piece in the paper" unless young Probert should
+speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began
+by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending
+Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way they
+felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he had
+simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life.
+
+"Well, hanged if I understand!" poor Mr. Dosson had said. "I thought you
+liked the piece--you think it's so queer THEY don't like it." "They," in
+the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts
+in congress assembled.
+
+"I don't think anything's queer but you!" Delia had retorted; and she
+had let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of
+"handling" Mr. Flack.
+
+"Is that so?" the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made
+him wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of so
+many Parisian hours.
+
+Francie's visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the
+court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been
+going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The
+unsociable manner of the young journalist's departure deepened Mr.
+Dosson's dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said
+to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a
+personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with
+Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This
+haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication
+of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson's nature was
+the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be
+ashamed of themselves and he couldn't pity them, and that if they hadn't
+done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people's
+knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man's rough exit, still
+in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: "He
+says that's what they like over there and that it stands to reason that
+if you start a paper you've got to give them what they like. If you want
+the people with you, you've got to be with the people."
+
+"Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don't think the
+Proberts are with us much."
+
+"Oh he doesn't mean them," said Mr. Dosson.
+
+"Well, I do!" cried Delia.
+
+At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston
+insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn't say that he
+might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this
+idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly
+cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour
+uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular
+occasion for that when he talked about "preferred bonds" with her
+father. This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she had
+heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson,
+records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson
+pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he
+guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach
+but little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude which Delia
+perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia
+understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a great
+deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had
+committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements
+an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestic
+habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging
+provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled
+off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them
+services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least,
+scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident
+that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What Mr.
+Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there,
+especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the
+hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in two
+or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was in
+relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, as
+the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciative
+expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a most
+extraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he had
+had any conception of. "Of course I didn't like EVERYTHING" he said,"
+any more than I like everything anywhere."
+
+"Well, what didn't you like?" Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a
+short silence.
+
+Gaston Probert made his choice. "Well, the light for instance."
+
+"The light--the electric?"
+
+"No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching
+of a slate-pencil." As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if
+the reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he
+had not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away
+too long, Gaston immediately added: "I really think Francie might come
+in. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her."
+
+"I'll go and call her--I'll make her come," said Delia at the door. She
+left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr.
+Munster, Mr. Dosson's former partner, to whom he had taken a letter and
+who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at
+this; nevertheless he broke out suddenly:
+
+"Look here, you know; if you've got anything to say that you don't think
+very acceptable you had better say it to ME." Gaston changed colour, but
+his reply was checked by Delia's quick return. She brought the news that
+her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little dining-room--
+he would find her there. She had something for his ear that she could
+mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there was a lamp and a
+fire. "Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!" Mr. Dosson, at this,
+commented with a laugh. "What does she want to say to him?" he asked
+when Gaston had passed out.
+
+"Gracious knows! She won't tell me. But it's too flat, at his age, to
+live in such terror."
+
+"In such terror?"
+
+"Why of your father. You've got to choose."
+
+"How, to choose?"
+
+"Why if there's a person you like and he doesn't like."
+
+"You mean you can't choose your father," said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully.
+
+"Of course you can't."
+
+"Well then please don't like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him,"
+he added, faithful to his easier philosophy.
+
+"I guess you'd have to," said Delia.
+
+In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing
+by the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began.
+
+"You can't say I didn't tell you I should do something. I did nothing
+else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and
+again. You knew what to expect."
+
+"Ah don't say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!" the
+young man groaned. "You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry
+out your absurd threat."
+
+"Well, what does it matter when it's all over?"
+
+"It's not all over. Would to God it were!"
+
+The girl stared. "Don't you know what I sent for you to come in here
+for? To bid you good-bye."
+
+He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then "Francie,
+what on earth has got into you?" he broke out. "What deviltry, what
+poison?" It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the
+opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for
+confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan
+defiance that hardened their faces.
+
+"Don't they despise me--don't they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly
+you'll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles
+impossible to you."
+
+"I don't understand; it's like some hideous dream!" Gaston Probert
+cried. "You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make
+it worse by your talk. I don't believe it--I don't believe a word of
+it."
+
+"What don't you believe?" she asked.
+
+"That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you'll take that
+back (it's too monstrous!) if you'll deny it and give me your assurance
+that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be
+arranged."
+
+"Do you want me to lie?" asked Francie Dosson. "I thought you'd like
+pleasant words."
+
+"Oh Francie, Francie!" moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes.
+
+"What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?" she went on.
+
+"Why they'll accept it; they'll ask for nothing more. It's your
+participation they can't forgive."
+
+"THEY can't? Why do you talk to me of 'them'? I'm not engaged to
+'them'!" she said with a shrill little laugh.
+
+"Oh Francie _I_ am! And it's they who are buried beneath that filthy
+rubbish!"
+
+She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack's epistle, but
+returned as with more gravity: "I'm very sorry--very sorry indeed. But
+evidently I'm not delicate."
+
+He looked at her, helpless and bitter. "It's not the newspapers in your
+country that would have made you so. Lord, they're too incredible! And
+the ladies have them on their tables."
+
+"You told me we couldn't here--that the Paris ones are too bad," said
+Francie.
+
+"Bad they are, God knows; but they've never published anything like
+that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who
+only want to be left alone."
+
+Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand
+longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up
+at him. "Was it there you saw it?"
+
+He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd
+reflexion that she had never "realised" he had such fine lovely uplifted
+eyebrows. "Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment
+I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I
+opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor
+and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill."
+
+"Did you think it was me?" she patiently gaped.
+
+"About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified,
+too tormented."
+
+"Then why didn't you write to me, if you didn't think it was me?"
+
+"Write to you? I wrote to you every three days," he cried.
+
+"Not after that."
+
+"Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be
+Delia," Gaston added in a moment.
+
+"Oh she didn't want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told
+him. She tried to prevent me," Francie insisted.
+
+"Would to God then she had!" he wailed.
+
+"Haven't you told them she's delicate too?" she asked in her strange
+tone.
+
+He made no answer to this; he only continued: "What power, in heaven's
+name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?"
+
+"He's a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in
+Paris."
+
+"But, my dearest child, what 'gaieties,' what friends--what a man to
+know!"
+
+"If we hadn't known him we shouldn't have known YOU. Remember it was Mr.
+Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow's."
+
+"Oh you'd have come some other way," said Gaston, who made nothing of
+that.
+
+"Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in
+everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he
+asked me. I liked him for what he had done."
+
+Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively.
+"I see. It was a kind of delicacy."
+
+"Oh a 'kind'!"  She desperately smiled.
+
+He remained a little with his eyes on her face. "Was it for me?"
+
+"Of course it was for you."
+
+"Ah how strange you are!" he cried with tenderness. "Such
+contradictions--on s'y perd. I wish you'd say that to THEM, that way.
+Everything would be right."
+
+"Never, never!" said the girl. "I've wronged them, and nothing will ever
+be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe
+the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn't seem to me so
+bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to
+them. You know best," she repeated.
+
+"They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The sense
+of desecration, of pollution, you see"--he explained as if for
+conscience.
+
+"Oh you needn't tell me--I saw them all there!" she answered.
+
+"It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN'T brave them, did
+you?"
+
+"Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea's incredible!"
+she then hopelessly sighed.
+
+But he wouldn't have this. "No, no--I can imagine cases." He clearly had
+SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it.
+
+"But this isn't a case, hey?" she demanded. "Well then go back to them--
+go back," she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the table
+to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, pushed her
+chair back, springing up. "You know you didn't come here to tell me
+you're ready to give them up."
+
+"To give them up?" He only echoed it with all his woe at first. "I've
+been battling with them till I'm ready to drop. You don't know how they
+feel--how they MUST feel."
+
+"Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour."
+
+"It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful," said Gaston
+Probert.
+
+"I don't care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice."
+
+"Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I'll manage
+it. I only wish they hadn't seen you there in the Bois."
+
+"In the Bois?"
+
+"That Marguerite hadn't seen you--with that lying blackguard. That's the
+image they can't get over."
+
+Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most
+prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. "I see you can't
+either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That's all I
+can say. You must take me as I am," said Francie Dosson.
+
+"Don't--don't; you infuriate me!" he pleaded, frowning.
+
+She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. "Of
+course I do, and I shall do it again. We're too terribly different.
+Everything makes you so. You CAN'T give them up--ever, ever.  Good-bye--
+good-bye!  That's all I wanted to tell you."
+
+"I'll go and throttle him!" the young man almost howled.
+
+"Very well, go! Good-bye." She had stepped quickly to the door and had
+already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time.
+
+"Francie, Francie!" he supplicated, following her into the passage. The
+door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the
+other apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard her
+push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr.
+Dosson and Delia.
+
+"Why he acts just like Mr. Flack," said the old man when they discovered
+that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end.
+
+The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue
+de Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself
+to breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist
+usually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previous
+separation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston
+walked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before
+his easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this
+easy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the
+occasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth
+than the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow's compassion
+was slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled above
+all, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question of
+his poor friend's character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into
+passionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about
+continually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could
+take neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companion
+more than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner; he
+had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need for
+sympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would have
+buttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward and
+capable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of a drama;
+whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous and graceful--
+natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true young Anglo-Saxon
+wouldn't have known the particular acuteness of such a quandary, for he
+wouldn't have parted to such an extent with his freedom of spirit. It
+was the fact of this surrender on his visitor's part that excited
+Waterlow's secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, but to see it
+triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice made him feel
+he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. He now
+measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston's nature. To
+act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up the root, even if
+the operation should be terribly painful, should be attended with cries
+and tears and contortions, with baffling scruples and a sense of
+sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against his own flesh and
+blood. Now and again he broke out: "And if you should see her as she
+looks just now--she's too lovely, too touching!--you'd see how right I
+was originally, when I found her such a revelation of that rare type,
+the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about." But he
+reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression he seemed
+unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purpose and
+malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, of all
+people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, he
+verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When
+Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could
+only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would;
+it was his father's influence and example, his very genius, the worship
+of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and
+profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather
+wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired
+he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl
+over--was that the issue?
+
+"Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made
+a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It's whether
+it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over."
+
+"It depends upon the sense you attach to justification."
+
+"I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to
+make me so?"
+
+"To try--certainly, if they're capable of anything so nasty. The only
+fair play for them is to let you alone," Waterlow wound up.
+
+"Ah, they won't do that--they like me too much!" Gaston ingenuously
+cried.
+
+"It's an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to
+let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things,
+are involved."
+
+"Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she
+represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such
+possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it's upon THEM--I
+mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered."
+
+"Well," the elder man rather dryly said, "if you yourself have no
+secrets for persuading them of the contrary I'm afraid I can't teach you
+one."
+
+"Yes, I ought to do it myself," Gaston allowed in the candour of his
+meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: "They never
+believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about
+it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so
+because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that's what I did, heaven help me!
+and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease
+them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!"
+
+"That was your folly," Waterlow remarked, painting away.
+
+"My folly--to turn my back?"
+
+"No, no--to guarantee."
+
+"My dear fellow, wouldn't you?"--and Gaston stared.
+
+"Never in the world."
+
+"You'd have thought her capable--?"
+
+"Capabilissima!  And I shouldn't have cared."
+
+"Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way
+that's as bad?"
+
+"I shouldn't care if she was.  That's the least of all questions."
+
+"The least?"
+
+"Ah don't you see, wretched youth," cried the artist, pausing from his
+work and looking up--"don't you see that the question of her
+possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She's the
+sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I
+should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation."
+
+Gaston kept echoing. "In self-preservation?"
+
+"To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That's a
+much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They're
+doing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable of
+individual life."
+
+Gaston was immensely struck. "They are--they are!" he declared with
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Well then, if you believe it, for heaven's sake go and marry her to-
+morrow!" Waterlow threw down his implements and added: "And come out of
+this--into the air."
+
+Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. "And if
+she goes again and does the very same?"
+
+"The very same--?" Waterlow thought.
+
+"I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear."
+
+"Well," said Waterlow, "you'll at least have got rid of your family."
+
+"Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they're not there! They're
+right, pourtant, they're right," Gaston went on, passing out of the
+studio with his friend.
+
+"They're right?"
+
+"It was unimaginable that she should."
+
+"Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence taking
+you off your guard to give you your chance." This was ingenious, but,
+though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie's lover--if
+lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if he
+mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him
+however was his companion's saying to him in the vestibule, when they
+had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out:
+"Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don't you see that
+she's really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she's a
+perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an
+apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a
+rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you
+yourself have the wit to conceive?"
+
+"Ah my dear friend!"--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions,
+panted for gratitude.
+
+"The limit will be yours, not hers," Waterlow added.
+
+"No, no, I've done with limits," his friend ecstatically cried.
+
+That evening at ten o'clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de
+l'Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce
+him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson's apartments and then go
+and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there.
+
+"Oh you'll be better there than in the zalon--they've villed it with
+their luccatch," said the man, who always addressed him in an intention
+of English and wasn't ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to the
+amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had
+lately undergone.
+
+"With their luggage?"
+
+"They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don't think they themselves know
+for where, sir."
+
+"Please then say to Miss Francina that I've called on the most urgent
+business and am extraordinarily pressed."
+
+The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the
+order of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the
+waiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better
+explained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his
+hand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston
+had ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by
+stopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he
+looked as if he had been crying.
+
+"I've chosen--I've chosen," he said expressively, smiling at her in
+denial of these indications.
+
+"You've chosen?"
+
+"I've had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give
+YOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it was
+worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way
+too."
+
+"Ah I'm not worth it. You give up too much!" Francie returned. "We're
+going away--it's all over." She averted herself quickly, as if to carry
+out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--held
+her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister
+broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion.
+
+"Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!" Delia exclaimed.
+
+"You must take me with you if you're going away, Mr. Dosson," Gaston
+said. "I'll start whenever you like."
+
+"All right--where shall we go?" that amiable man asked.
+
+"Hadn't you decided that?"
+
+"Well, the girls said they'd tell me."
+
+"We were going home," Francie brought out.
+
+"No we weren't--not a wee mite!" Delia professed.
+
+"Oh not THERE" Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie.
+
+"Well, when you've fixed it you can take the tickets," Mr. Dosson
+observed with detachment.
+
+"To some place where there are no newspapers, darling," Gaston went on.
+
+"I guess you'll have hard work to find one," Mr. Dosson pursued.
+
+"Dear me, we needn't read them any more. We wouldn't have read that one
+if your family hadn't forced us," Delia said to her prospective brother-
+in-law.
+
+"Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look at
+one," he very gravely declared.
+
+"You'll see, sir,--you'll have to!" Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted.
+
+"No, you'll tell us enough."
+
+Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather
+unnaturally smiling. "Won't they forgive me ever?" she asked, looking
+up.
+
+"Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that
+case what good will their forgiveness do you?"
+
+"Well, perhaps it's better to pay for it," the girl went on.
+
+"To pay for it?"
+
+"By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful," she solemnly gloomily
+said.
+
+"Oh for all you'll suffer--!" Gaston protested, shining down on her.
+
+"It was for you--only for you, as I told you," Francie returned.
+
+"Yes, don't tell me again--I don't like that explanation! I ought to let
+you know that my father now declines to do anything for me," the young
+man added to Mr. Dosson.
+
+"To do anything for you?"
+
+"To make me any allowance."
+
+"Well, that makes me feel better. We don't want your father's money, you
+know," this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness.
+
+"There'll be enough for all; especially if we economise in newspapers"--
+Delia carried it elegantly off.
+
+"Well, I don't know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing," her
+father as gaily returned.
+
+"Don't you be afraid he'll ever send it now!" she shouted in her return
+of confidence.
+
+"I'm very sorry--because they were all lovely," Francie went on to
+Gaston with sad eyes.
+
+"Let us wait to say that till they come back to us," he answered
+somewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether
+his relatives were lovely or not.
+
+"I'm sure you won't have to wait long!" Delia remarked with the same
+cheerfulness.
+
+"'Till they come back'?" Mr. Dosson repeated. "Ah they can't come back
+now, sir. We won't take them in!" The words fell from his lips with a
+fine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary
+silence, and it is a sign of Gaston's complete emancipation that he
+didn't in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his
+race. The resentment was rather Delia's, but she kept it to herself, for
+she was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the house
+would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the
+Proberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister's marriage
+was really to take place her consciousness that the American people
+would have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The party
+left the Hotel de l'Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it
+appeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece
+from the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at
+all clear as to where they were going.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REVERBERATOR ***
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