"I'm afraid you won't," I replied. "I wouldn't advise her to lose steady employment for the purpose of posing a couple of weeks for you."
"I suppose not. How do you like that Spanish omelette?"
Thus he cut short all reference to Frances, and, soon afterwards, we parted on the Avenue.
During the next two months there was little worthy of being chronicled. Frances, I think, grew a little thinner, but always asserted that she was in the best of health. Baby Paul was rapidly accumulating weight, and Frieda and I offered him a small baby carriage, which folded up most cleverly and took little room in the shop or at home. It was on the occasion of the completion of his fourth month that the presentation was made by my dear old friend.
"There, my dear, is a gimcrack thing David insisted on buying. The man at the store swore it couldn't possibly fold up suddenly with the baby in it. And now what do you think of my having that old blue dress of mine dyed black?"
The reply of Frances was a heartfelt one as to the perambulator, but discouraging in regard to the garment.
"Oh, never mind," said Frieda. "I'll make paint rags out of it, then. I only thought I'd help out the shop. Now let us get David to give us a cup of tea."
We were talking cheerfully together, when Gordon dropped in from the skies, most unexpectedly. We were glad to see him and, since four people in my room crowded it considerably, my friend took a seat on the bed. I had first met him in the Bohemia of the Latin Quarter, when his necktie out-floated all others and any one prophesying that he would become the portrayer in ordinary to the unsubmerged would have been met with incredulous stares. At that time, for him, Béranger was the only poet and Murger the only writer. And now his clothes are built, while his shoes are designed. Yet, in my top floor, he showed some of the old Adam, joining gladly in our orgy of tea and wafers and utterly forgetting all pose. I noticed that he looked a great deal at Frances, but it was no impertinent stare. She was quite unconscious of his scrutiny or, if at all aware of it, probably deemed it a continuation of his method of artistic study. She had become accustomed to it in his studio.
"David tells me that you are lost to me as a model," he said, suddenly, with a sort of eagerness that showed a trace of disappointment.