During this appeal, the lady's demeanour had softened more still. A faint smile hovered on her lips; her gaze was half gratified, half amused.
"Oh, you're a painter?" she said; "you want me to sit to you for the
Salon? I don't know, I'm sure."
"It is not precisely for the Salon," he acknowledged. "But I am absorbed by the scheme—it will be the crown of my career. I will explain. It is a long story. If—if we could sit down?"
"Where?"
"There appears to be a café close to the agency," said Goujaud timidly.
"Oh!" She dismissed the café's pretensions with her eyebrows.
"You are right," he stammered. "Now that I look at it again, I see that it is quite a common place. Well, will you permit me to walk a little way with you?"
"We will go to breakfast at Armenonville, if you like," she said graciously, "where you can explain to me at your leisure." It seemed to Goujaud that his heart dropped into his stomach and turned to a cannon-ball there. Armenonville? What would such a breakfast cost? Perhaps a couple of louis? Never in his life had he contemplated breakfasting at Armenonville.
She smiled, as if taking his consent for granted. Her loveliness and air of fashion confused him dreadfully. And if he made excuses, there would be no poster! Oh, he must seize the chance at any price!
"Oh course—I shall be enchanted," he mumbled. And before he half realised that the unprecedented thing had happened they were rattling away, side by side in a fiacre.