She came farther into the room. She moved with an easy dignity, her advance into the light displaying the lines of her gracile figure, the turn of her head discovering the young curve of her throat; her eyes, as they moved about his studio, were clear and starry.
In the presence of their original, Cartaret had forgotten the portraits. Now she saw them and turned scarlet.
It was a time for no more pride on the part of the painter: already, head high in air, she had turned to go. It was a time for honest dealing. Cartaret barred her way.
“Forgive me!” he cried. “Won’t you please forgive me?”
She tried to pass him without a word.
“But listen. Only listen a minute! You didn’t think—oh, you didn’t think I’d sold him one of those? They were on the wall when he came in, and I couldn’t get them away in time. I’d put them up—Well, I’d put them up there because I—because I couldn’t see you, so I wanted to see them.”
His voice trembled; he looked ill now: she hesitated.
“What right had you, sir, to paint them?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t any. Of course, I hadn’t any! But I wouldn’t have sold them to the Luxembourg.”
What was it that Fourget had told her when he met her on the stair?—“Mademoiselle, you will pardon an old man: that Young Cartarette cannot paint pot-boilers, and in consequence he starves. For more things than money, mademoiselle. But because he cannot paint pot-boilers and get money, he starves literally.”—Her heart smote her now, but she could not refrain from saying: