She had shown talent in the school where she had started in Ireland, and had taken a scholarship and had come to Paris to study, to venture unprepared and quite wildly into the student life, to struggle on small means and insufficient food uphill toward art. She displayed in talking a touching confidence in herself and worship of beauty, as well as a simple and loyal attitude toward life
in general. She occupied a furnished room near the studio and, as she expressed it, "fished for herself." She was the oldest of seven children, with a weight of responsibility on herself. Her father's salary was ridiculous, she told him, not enough to bring up one hungry child well, much less half a dozen.
"I thought that I could support myself with my art," she told Fairfax, "and that I should soon be arrivée, lancée, but to-day, when the criticism discouraged me and I knew that I should have to write home for money soon, well ... I'd not like to tell you what strange fancies came." She lifted up her finger and pointed at the river as it lay between its shores. "And now," she glanced at him, "when you tell me, too, that I am no good at painting!"
"I haven't said that," remonstrated Fairfax; "but don't let's talk about work now, what do you say? Let's have a holiday."
They walked up the Palace over the cobbles of the courtyard and paused to look back at the Route de Paris, that Miss Nora Scarlet might thoroughly picture the procession of the fish-wives and the march of the Paris populace up to Versailles, where the people swept its violent sea over the royal courts and the foam rose to the windows where royal faces whitened against the panes. Nora Scarlet and Fairfax wandered through the great rooms, part of the tourist crowd. The handsome man limped, a student's stoop across his shoulders, by the side of the small blond girl with her student cape and her soft hat, her hair like chrysanthemum petals. Fairfax took occasion in the portrait room to tell her that she looked like a Greuze. Nora Scarlet was an appreciative sightseer.
"Oh, if I could only paint," she murmured, "if I could only paint!" and she clasped her woollen gloves prayerfully before the portraits of the Filles de France. But the Nattiers and the Fragonards mocked her, and the green portfolio under Fairfax's arm mocked her still more. Side by side, they penetrated into the little rooms where a Queen lived, intrigued, loved, and played her part. And Fairfax had his envies before Houdon's head of Marie Antoinette.
The wide, sweet, leaf-strewn alleys were very nearly deserted where they stood, for the day had grown colder and the winter sunlight left early to give place to a long still winter evening. Their footsteps made no sound on the brown carpet of the park. Antony had not stopped to ask what kind of a woman the girl student was when he spontaneously left his lonely seat in the restaurant to take his place at her side, but everything she said to him revealed a frank, innocent mind. He saw that she had come with him without thinking twice, and he should have been touched by it. He drew her arm within his as they passed the great fountain. The basin was empty and its curve as round and smooth as human lips.
"Now," he said, "the time has come to talk of you and what you want to do and can do, and how you can do it."
"That's awfully kind."