"It means that he will have to advance a little money for your expenses while you study," said Frieda judicially.
"Yes, of course, and after months and months of study we may find out that my voice will never again be the same, and that all this has been wasted, and that I shall never be able to pay it back. He has always worked dreadfully hard and denied himself ever so many things in order to be kind to others, and now——"
"And now he is making money hand over fist. I just went to see a friend off on the steamer to Bermuda and every other passenger has a copy of that blessed book in his hand. Now that Dave is being rewarded at last, and is entitled to a bit of extravagance, to a little of the comfort money can bring, you won't help him. You know that it will make him perfectly miserable, if you don't accept. Oh, dear! I think I'm talking a lot of nonsense. Do behave yourself, Frances, and let the poor fellow have his own way, for once."
And so it was finally settled, after another tear or two and some laughter, and Frieda joyously sat down to the piano and began to play some horrible tango thing and Baby Paul awoke and protested, as any sensible infant would. The next day, I took Frances over to Richetti's, and he was ever so pleasant and courteous to her, and most sympathetic. I left her with him, fearing that my presence might distract her attention from more important matters, and went to a tailor to order a suit of clothes. It gratified me considerably to feel that, for the time being, there would be no sinful extravagance in eschewing the ready-made. There is indeed a great comfort in the inkling that one is beginning to get along in the world. After this I had my hair cut, and returned, exuding bay rum, to Richetti's studio.
Frances was waiting for me. The maestro was already engaged with another pupil, and we went out to find seats on an open car.
"He says he thinks it will be all right," she told me, eagerly. "The tone is there and the volume. All I need is exercise, much judicious exercise. He is the first teacher I ever met who told me that my breathing was all right. They always want you to follow some entirely new method of their own. He will give me three lessons a week, in the morning. That will be enough for the present. At first, I must only practise an hour a day. And so I can go back to Madame Félicie, because she will be very glad to have me every afternoon and three mornings a week and so I can keep on making a little money and I won't have to borrow so much from you. Isn't it splendid?"
"I wish you would give up the shop," I told her.
But she shook her head, obstinately, and, of course, she had to have her own way. That evening we went to Camus, and I doubt whether the place ever saw three happier people. Frieda beamed all over and gorged herself on mussels à la marinière. She had just finished a portrait that pleased her greatly, and was about to take up a nymph and faun she had long projected.
"I don't suppose I would do for the nymph?" asked Frances.
"You a nymph! I want some slender wisp of a child just changing into womanhood, my dear. You are the completed article, the flower opened to its full beauty. If I ever paint you, it will have to be as some goddess that has descended to the earth to mother a child of man."