"You would never have touched a brush!"
"Certainly; but instead of it a common kitchen-spoon and similar household utensils. Why do you look at me incredulously? Do you think I have been all my life a plain old maid? I, too, was once seventeen years old, and by no means ill-looking--naturally not to be compared to what is now sitting opposite me--not a regular feature in my whole pretty face, no form, no style, merely the ordinary beauté du diable. But, if one may trust certain evidences--though my archives of sonnets, ball-favors, and other delicate offerings of the sort are burned, to be sure--I was as neat and attractive a young person as thousands of others. I had plenty of mother wit, you could read in my eyes that I had a good heart, and, besides, I was by no means poor. Why should I have lacked suitors? No, my dear, I even had a choice; and although I do not now understand why I preferred one particular mortal to all others, I must have known well enough at the time. I dimly remember how wonderfully happy, joyous, and in love I was! If all had gone on in the beaten track, I should probably have always been as happy and as much in love--constancy is my chief fault--even if no longer so joyous. But this was not to be. My betrothed was drowned while bathing--just think of it, what an absurd misfortune! I was driven into a brain fever by the shock and grief; when I got up from it my little beauté du diable had gone to the diable. The next few years were spent as a widowed bride, in tears; and, when these gradually ceased to flow, I was a plain, prematurely-faded person, with a heart to be sure that had never yet fairly blossomed out, but about which no one troubled himself particularly. It was at that time also that we lost our little property, and I was obliged to take up with some pursuit or other; then it turned out to be good luck that even as a child at school I had wasted much time on drawing and painting. Do you believe, dear friend, that a virtue which one makes in this way out of a necessity--no matter how deserving it may be--can ever make a mortal thoroughly happy at heart?"
"Why not, when all kinds of happiness come with it, as has been the case with you? You visited Italy with that kind old lady about whom you told me such nice stories the other day; you can work at your art here in perfect freedom, without anxiety, thanks to the legacy of your motherly friend; you live in this beautiful city, in the society of friends and colleagues in art by whom you are respected--is all that nothing?"
"True, it is a great deal, and yet--I will whisper something in your ear--let it be entirely between ourselves, and if I did not love you so unreasonably that you might ask anything of me I would sooner bite off my tongue than confess it to any living mortal--if I should become, in the course of time, as celebrated as my namesake (whose pictures, it must be confessed, always appear to me to be very stupid), or even should in so far succeed as to become contented with myself as an artist, I would give up all this exceptional good fortune for an ordinary, humdrum happiness; a good husband, who need not even be a remarkable combination of excellences, and a few pretty children, who, for all I care, might be a little bit boisterous and naughty. There, now you know all about it, and you will laugh at me because I so naively confessed to you what we women generally hide like a sin."
"You would certainly have made a splendid housewife," said Julie, musingly. "You are so good, so warmhearted, so unselfish; you might have made a husband very happy. I--when I compare myself with you--but why shouldn't we call each other 'du?' I have had all sorts of unpleasant experiences with women friends with whom I have used that familiar form, and that is the reason I have been so slow about it with you--. Stop, stop, you must leave my head on my shoulders!--you are squeezing me to death--if I had only known it sooner! And who knows but what if you learn to know me better--."
The artist had thrown away palette and maulstick, and had, after her enthusiastic fashion, rushed upon the adored friend who had at last made this return for her worship.
"If I should know you a hundred years, I'll take care to love you a hundred times more dearly!" she cried, as, kneeling down before Julie, she folded her hands in her lap with a droll vivacity, and gazed reverentially through her spectacles at the beautiful face.
"No," said her friend earnestly, "you do not really know me yet. Have you any suspicion that by my own fault I have thrown away that happiness for which you long, because, even as my best friends said, I was heartless?"
"Nonsense!" cried Angelica. "You heartless? Then I am a crocodile and live on human flesh!"
Julie smiled.