"How do you know the wall is too steep for Berenice?" the girl cried as she scaled the top with apish agility, where, after a few mocking steps in the moonlight, she sank down breathless beside Hubert, and laughed so loudly that her mother was fearful of hysteria.
"Berenice! Berenice!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, Berenice is all right, mamma. Master Hubert, I want you to paint my portrait before papa returns—that's to be in four weeks, isn't it?" The elder pair regarded her disconcertedly.
"Oh, you needn't look so dismal. I'll not tell tales out of school. Hubert and mamma flirting! What a glorious jest! Isn't life a jest, Hubert? Let's make a bargain! If you paint mamma, you paint me, also. Then—you see—papa will not be jealous, and—and—" She was near tears her mother felt, and she leaned over Hubert and took the girl's hand. She grazed the long fingers of the painter, who at once caught both feminine hands in his.
"Now I have you both," he boasted, and was shocked by a vicious tap on the cheek—Berenice in rage pulled her left hand free. Silence ensued. Hubert prudently began to roll another cigarette, and Madame Mineur retreated out of the moonlight, while Berenice turned her back and soon began to hum. The artist spoke first:
"See here, you silly Berenice, turn around! I want to talk to you like a Dutch uncle—as we say in the United States. Of course I'll paint you. But I begin with your mother. And if you wish me to like you better than ever, don't say such things as you did. It hurts your—mother." His voice dropped into its deepest bass. She faced him, and he saw the glitter of wet eyelashes. She was charming, with her hair in disorder, her eyes two burning points of fire.
"I beg your pardon, mamma; I beg your pardon, Hubert. I'll be good the rest of this evening. Isn't it lovely?" She sniffed in the breeze with dilating nostrils, and the wild look of her set him to wondering how such a gentle mother could have such a gypsy daughter. Perhaps it was the father—yes, the old man had been an Apache in his youth according to the slang of the studios.
"But you must paint me as I wish, not as you will," resumed Berenice. "I hate conventional portraits. Papa Mineur chills me with his cabinet pictures of haughty society ladies, their faces as stiff as their starched gowns."
"Oh, Berenice, will you never say polite things of your father?"
"Never," she defiantly replied. "He wouldn't believe me if I did. No, Hubert, I want to pose as Ophelia. Oh, don't laugh, please!" They could not help it, and she leaped to the grass and called out:—