Jean shook his head impatiently. “What difference does that make?” he exclaimed. “Am I not a man and an artist; do you suppose all men are inhuman and monstrous like that crétin who spoke to you just now? My poor child, I will prove to you that all are not!”
“No, no,” said Margot quickly, “indeed I do not think it. I know that you, Monsieur, are for certain different. You have not seen me before, perhaps, but I have seen you often; you are not like the other gentlemen who come here and never leave us alone. I have often wondered what you came here for, but of course de Brances has many friends who like to see her on the stage, some of them may be—” Margot hesitated; it looked a little ungracious to admit to a friend of de Brances that some few of that lady’s intimates might behave with tolerable decency behind her back!—“may be artists,” she finished instead, “and that makes always for a kind of sympathy.”
“I am a musician,” said Jean with emphasis.
“A musician,” echoed Margot very softly.
“And I am very poor,” Jean continued, “I am a struggling artist!”
Jean announced this statement as if it were a proclamation of ascent to the throne. He succeeded in startling Margot, to whom, however, poverty did not appear to have quite the same meritorious halo that it wore to Jean’s less accustomed eyes. But then Margot knew what real poverty meant.
“But that is a misfortune for Monsieur,” she said gently.
“No, it is not,” replied Jean impatiently; “if I were not poor I could not offer to help you, you would very justly refuse me; but now I have a plan that I think you will be willing to accept.”
Margot’s eyes grew rounder and rounder; she was not quite sure that this strange and attractive gentleman sitting on the box beside her was sane, but she was quite sure that he was kind, and that it was extraordinarily interesting to listen to him. Margot thought he must be rather like an angel; but it is possible that Margot would have felt uncertain how practical an angel’s plan would be for Paris. She knew her Paris, and she did not fancy that the heavenly powers made much of a success there.
“Monsieur has a plan, then?” she murmured.