'Were you not in the Louvre this morning with Mademoiselle Delaunay?' he asked, lowering his voice a little; 'you are a stranger?'
'Yes, an Englishman,' David stammered, taken by surprise. Regnault's look swept over the youth's face, kindling in an instant with the artist's delight in beautiful line and tint.
'Are you going now?'
'Yes,' said David hurriedly. 'It must be late?'
'Midnight, past. May I walk with you?'
David, overwhelmed, made some hurried excuses to his two companions, and found himself pushing his way to the door, an unnoticed figure in the tumult of Regnault's exit.
When they got into the street outside, Regnault walked fast southwards for a minute or so without speaking. Then he stopped abruptly, with the gesture of one shaking off a weight.
'Pah! this Paris chokes me.'
Then, walking on again, he said, half-coherently, and to himself:
'So vile,—so small,—so foul! And there are such great things in the world. Beasts!—pigs!—and yet so generous, so struggling, such a hard fight for it. So gifted,—many of them! What are you here for?'