"'Goethe's Autobiography!' Oh, thank you—how kind you are!"
"Not at all," laughed Falkenstein. "To merit such things I ought to have saved your life at least. What are you doing here; writing some more proverbs, I hope, to give me a part in one?"
She shook her head. "Nothing half so agreeable. I am writing dinner invitations, and answering Belle's letters."
"Why, can't she answer them herself?"
"My motto here is 'Ich Dien,'" she answered, with a flush on her cheeks.
Bella turned languidly round, and verified her words: "Val, Puppet's scratching at the door; let him in, will you?"
Waldemar rose and opened the door for a little slate-colored greyhound, and while Bella lisped out her regrets for his trouble, smiled a smile that made Miss Cashranger color, and looked searchingly at Valérie to see how she took it. She turned a grateful, radiant look on him, and whispered, "Je m'affranchirai un jour."
"Et comment?"
She raised her mobile eyebrows: "Dieu sait! Comme actrice, comme feuilletonniste—j'ai mes rêves, monsieur—mais pas comme institutrice: cela me tuerait bientôt."
"Je le crois," said Falkenstein, briefly, as he took up the autobiography, and began to talk on it.