Part 14 (2/2)

”I--I had none,” Cartaret stammered.

”Ah!”--Fourget peered hard at him through those glistening spectacles.

”You painted them from memory?”

”Yes.” Cartaret felt his face redden. ”From imagination, I mean.”

Then Fourget understood. Perhaps he had merely the typical Frenchman's love of romance, which ceases only with the typical Frenchman's life; or perhaps he remembered his own youth in Besancon, when he, too, had wanted to be an artist and when, among the vines on the hillside, little Rosalie smiled at him and kissed his ambition away--little Rosalie Poullot, dust and ashes these twenty years in the Cimetiere du Mont Parna.s.se....

He turned to a pile of pot-boilers. He took one almost at random.

”This one,” he said, ”I should like to buy it.”

It was the worst pot-boiler of the lot. Before the portraits, it was hopeless.

Cartaret half understood.

”No,” he said; ”you don't really want it.”

Seraphin had been right: the young man was proud. ”How then?” demanded Fourget. ”This also did you paint not-to-sell?”

”I painted it to sell,” said Cartaret miserably, ”but it doesn't deserve selling--perhaps just because I did paint it to sell.”

To his surprise, Fourget came to him and put an arm on his shoulder, a withered hand patting the American's back.

”Ah, if but some more-famous artists felt as you do! Come; let me have it. That is very well. I shall sell it to a fool. Many fools are my patrons. How else could I live? There is not enough good art to meet all demands, or there are not enough demands to meet all good art. Who shall say? Suffice it there are demands of sorts. Daily I thank the good G.o.d for His fools....”

Cartaret went to Les Halles and bought a large box of strawberries.

He had put them carefully on his window-shelf and covered them with a copy of a last week's _Matin_--being an American, he of course read the _Matin_--for he was resolved that, now he again had a little money, these strawberries should be his final extravagance and should be treasured accordingly--he had just anch.o.r.ed the paper against the gentle Spring breeze when he became aware that he had another visitor.

Standing by his table, much as she had stood there on the night of his second sight of her, was the Lady of the Rose.

Cartaret thought that his eyes were playing him tricks. He rubbed his eyes.

”It is I,” she said.

He thought that again he could detect the perfume of the Azure Rose.

He again thought that he could see white mountain-tops in the sun. He could have sworn that, in the street, a hurdy-gurdy was playing:

”Her brow is like the snaw-drift; Her throat is like the swan----”

”I came in,” she was saying, ”to see how you were. I should have sent Chitta, but she was so long coming back from an errand.”

”Thank you,” he said--he was not yet certain of himself--”I'm quite well. But I'm very glad you called.”

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