"All Paris would flock to your debut. They would go saying, 'Can she be as beautiful as her portrait?' And they would come back saying, 'She is lovelier still!' Let me give you some more wine."
"No more; I'll have coffee, and a grand marnier—red."
"Doubtless the more expensive colour!" reflected Goujaud. But the time had passed for dwelling on minor troubles. "Listen," he resumed; "I shall tell you my history. You will then realise to what an abyss of despair your refusal will plunge me—to what effulgent heights I may be raised by your consent. You cannot be marble! My father—"
"Indeed, I am not marble," she put in. "I am instinct with sensibility —it is my great weakness."
"So much the better. Be weak to me. My father—"
"Oh, let us get out of this first!" she suggested, "You can talk to me as we drive."
And the attentive Jules presented the discreetly folded bill.
For fully thirty seconds the Pavilion d'Armenonville swirled round the unfortunate painter so violently that he felt as if he were on a roundabout at a fair. He feared that the siren must hear the pounding of his heart. To think that he had dreaded paying two louis! Two louis? Why, it would have been a bagatelle! Speechlessly he laid a fortune on the salver. With a culminating burst of recklessness he waved four francs towards Jules, and remarked that that personage eyed the tip with cold displeasure. "What a lucrative career, a waiter's!" moaned the artist; "he turns up his nose at four francs!"
Well, he had speculated too heavily to accept defeat now! Bracing himself for the effort, Goujaud besought the lady's help with such a flood of blandishment during the drive that more than once she seemed at the point of yielding. Only one difficult detail had he withheld— that he wished to pose her on the knee of Mephistopheles—and to propitiate her further, before breaking the news, he stopped the cab at a florist's.
She was so good-humoured and tractable after the florist had pillaged him that he could scarcely be callous when she showed him that she had split her glove. But, to this day, he protests that, until the glove-shop had been entered, it never occurred to him that it would be necessary to present her with more than one pair. As they came out— Goujaud moving beside her like a man in a trance—she gave a faint start.