“Be consoled, dear friend,” she said, with a smile, half cheering, half mournful. “Perhaps for all true artists the solitary lot is the best.”
“I will try to think so,” answered Rameau; “and meanwhile I thank you with a full heart for the sweetness with which you have checked my presumption—the presumption shall not be repeated. Gratefully I accept the friendship you deign to tender me. You bid me forget the words I uttered. Promise in turn that you will forget them—or at least consider them withdrawn. You will receive me still as friend?”
“As friend, surely: yes. Do we not both need friends?” She held out her hand as she spoke; he bent over it, kissed it with respect, and the interview thus closed.
CHAPTER V.
It was late in the evening that day when a man who had the appearance of a decent bourgeois, in the lower grades of that comprehensive class, entered one of the streets in the Faubourg Montmartre, tenanted chiefly by artisans. He paused at the open doorway of a tall narrow house, and drew back as he heard footsteps descending a very gloomy staircase.
The light from a gas lamp on the street fell full on the face of the person thus quitting the house—the face of a young and handsome man, dressed with the quiet elegance which betokened one of higher rank or fashion than that neighbourhood was habituated to find among its visitors. The first comer retreated promptly into the shade, and, as by sudden impulse, drew his hat low down over his eyes.
The other man did not, however, observe him, went his way with a quick step along the street, and entered another house some yards distant.
“What can that pious Bourbonite do here?” muttered the first comer. “Can he be a conspirator? Diable! ‘tis as dark as Erebus on that staircase.”
Taking cautious hold of the banister, the man now ascended the stairs. On the landing of the first floor there was a gas lamp which threw upward a faint ray that finally died at the third story. But at that third story the man’s journey ended; he pulled a bell at the door to the right, and in another moment or so the door was opened by a young woman of twenty-eight or thirty, dressed very simply, but with a certain neatness not often seen in the wives of artisans in the Faubourg Montmartre. Her face, which, though pale and delicate, retained much of the beauty of youth, became clouded as she recognised the visitor; evidently the visit was not welcome to her.