She had even proposed to send her to Chicago as a professor of physical training in the Women’s University founded by her father. The situation was brilliant, her future would be assured, and she would probably make a very good marriage before long. Helia thanked her effusively—but something kept her in Paris; and she added: “Paris alone gives the consecration to artistes!”
Ethel knew that Helia was preparing a number which was to make a sensation. Meanwhile, she had her little sister, and, so it seemed, was paying for the old clown Cemetery out of pure goodness of soul. For the time being she was pinched for money. Ethel would have been happy to do her a kindness; but she knew that Helia would never accept anything under any form whatsoever, not even a gift to Sœurette. A smile, yes! a kind word, yes! an obligation, no!
It was the same with Suzanne, the model who sometimes posed for pupils, and whose acquaintance Ethel had also made. This simplicity of manners, which was at the foundation of their race, touched Ethel. She pardoned the “pigmies” many things for the sake of these brave little hearts. An acrobat and a model—what matters it? Character is everything!
“Model—time! Rest!”
There was a noise of palettes laid aside and pupils rising in their places. The old marquis telescoped his neck into his laces and came down from the table.
“You who are collecting mummies,” Yvonne de Grojean said, laughing, to Ethel, “you ought to add the concierge; he is a type!”
“Don’t laugh, Yvonne,” said Ethel; “he would do very well in our hall in Chicago; he’d give it an air of the old régime; there are heaps of men like that in princely anterooms.”
Painting was over and they were now talking in the still-life corner. Of the other students some were walking two by two, some were standing, and others seated on the high stools; and some were grouped about Mlle. Yvonne and Ethel, who was, in a way, their leader, by the social position she held, and the prestige of her name. All around her they conversed as in a parlor, amusing themselves with a passing broil between the English Miss Arabella and Mlle. Yvonne.
“England should not allow it!” Miss Arabella had exclaimed, speaking of some performance of French politics.
“French affairs concern us alone!” Mlle. Yvonne, usually so timid, had retorted, as she raised her head whereon her hair was rolled like a helmet.