"Pshaw! With influence—"
She frowned, and the wicked, drooping expression played about her mouth.
"True. The Duc de Mora's protégée. Oh! you need not excuse yourself. I know what people say of him, and I care as little for it as that!" She threw a pellet of clay which flattened out against the wall. "Perhaps, indeed, by dint of imagining what is not—But let us drop those vile things," she said, with a toss of her little aristocratic head. "I am anxious to give you pleasure, Minerva. Your friend shall go to the Salon this year."
At that moment the odor of caramel, of hot pastry invaded the studio, where the twilight was falling in fine, decolorized dust; and the Fairy appeared, with a plate of fritters in her hand, a true fairy, rejuvenated in gay attire, arrayed in a white tunic which afforded glimpses, beneath the yellowed lace, of her lovely old woman's arms, the charm that is the last to die.
"Look at my kuchlen, darling; see if they're not a success this time. Oh! I beg your pardon; I didn't see that you had company. Ah! It's Monsieur Paul? Are you pretty well, Monsieur Paul? Pray taste one of my cakes."
And the amiable old lady, to whom her costume seemed to impart extraordinary animation, came prancing forward, balancing her plate on the ends of her doll-like fingers.
"Let him alone," said Felicia calmly. "You can offer him some at dinner."
"At dinner!"
The dancer was so thunderstruck that she nearly overturned her pretty cakes, which were as light and dainty and excellent as herself.
"Why, yes, I am keeping him to dinner with us. Oh! I beg you," she added with peculiar earnestness, seeing that the young man made a gesture of refusal, "I beg you, do not say no. You can do me a real service by staying to-night. Come, I did not hesitate a moment ago, you know."