Cartaret looked long into her eyes.
“All right,” he said at last. “I am glad to have that much. And—thank you.”
He stuck to his side of their agreement; not only during that afternoon in the Bois, but during the days that followed. He worked hard. He turned out one really good picture, and he turned out many successful pot-boilers. He would not impose these on Fourget, because old Fourget had already been too kind to him; but Lepoittevin wanted such stuff, and Cartaret let him have it.
Cartaret worked gladly now, because he was, however little she might guess it, working for Vitoria. He had left for himself precisely enough to keep him alive, but every third or fourth day he would have the happiness of slipping a little silver into Chitta’s horny palm: Chitta came readily to the habit of waiting for him on the stair. He grew happier day by day, and looked—as who does not?—the better for it. He sought out Seraphin and Varachon; he bought brandy for Houdon; went to hear Devignes sing, and once he had Armand Garnier to luncheon. He rewarded the hurdy-gurdy so splendidly that it was a nightly visitor to the rue du Val de Grâce: the entire street was whistling “Annie Laurie.”
Seraphin guessed the truth.
“Ah, my friend,” he nodded, “that foolish one, Houdon, says that you have again decided to spend of your income: I know that you are somehow making largess with your heart.”
Cartaret took frequent walks with Vitoria, Chitta always two feet behind, never closer, but never farther away. Often he saw the Lady to her classes, more frequently they walked to the Ile Saint Louis, or between the old houses of the rue des Francs Bourgeois; to the Jardin des Plantes, or into the Cours de Dragon or St. Germain des Prés: Chitta’s unsophisticated mind should have been improved by a thorough knowledge of picturesque Paris.
He was guilty of trying to elude the guardian—guilty of some rather shabby tricks in that direction—and he suffered the more in conscience because they were almost uniformly unsuccessful. More than once, however, he reached a state of exaltation in which he forgot Chitta, cared nothing about Chitta, and then he felt nearer Heaven.
On one such occasion he was actually nearer than the site usually ascribed to the Celestial City. With Vitoria and her guardian he had climbed—it was at his own malign suggestion—to Montmartre and, since Chitta feared the funicular, had toiled up the last steep ascent into Notre Dame de Sacre Coeur. Chitta’s piety—or her exhaustion—kept her long upon her knees in that Byzantine nave, and the Lady and Cartaret had a likely flying-start up the stairs to the tower. Cartaret possessed the wit to say nothing, but he noticed that Vitoria’s blue eyes shone with a light of adventure, which tacitly approved of the escapade, and that her step was as quick as his own when Chitta’s slower step, heavy breathing and muttered imprecations became audible below them.
“I’m sure the old girl will have to rest on the way up, for all her spryness,” thought Cartaret. “If we can only hold this pace, we ought to have five minutes alone on the ramparts.”