“For the gallery, and the gallery alone, madame.”
He tried to speak quietly, but his face was very red, and he drew his breath in short gasps. His opponent, with her air of superb calm, and her dignified manner, impressed him in spite of himself. When poor Nathalie had got him away, and they were together in the carriage, he muttered:
“Was there ever such a ridiculous woman! For all that, there is what you must aim at. There’s an air for you, a presence! You don’t catch me here again in a hurry; but if I were you, my girl, I’d practise that way she has of looking as if you were the dust under her feet. It was just as much as I could do to hold my own against it, I can tell you. All looking. She hadn’t a word to say. And she’ll have to give in.”
“As a particular favour, don’t press it, dear father. You can see how disagreeable it would be for me.”
“Aha, but you must learn to look, too, now you are one of them. No. I am resolved, and I shall write to Monsieur de Beaudrillart.”
Nathalie promised herself to be first in the field with her husband, but how to keep the peace between these clashing wills? Léon only laughed when he heard of the dilemma.
“Oh, we will find a way out of it! Your father is absolutely right, my Nathalie; that face of yours is worthy of the best painter and the best place. But my mother, dear woman, has her little prejudices about the gallery.”
“And I would not be there for worlds!” she cried, shuddering. “Without you, and to be left to the mercy of those old Beaudrillarts? No, Léon, do not ask it!”
“Leave it to me. It would be so charming to have your portrait, and you would endure a little to please me, oh!”
“Ah, much!” she said, frankly, putting her hand on his. “But your mother is right, for if any one is to be there, it should be you—you who belong to them, and whom they would have nothing against.”