“Because the chances are that you may know something some day, but there isn’t much chance of your ever doing anything.”
Miss Anthon flushed at this cool estimation of her range by her uncle’s protégé. Yet her good sense and her curiosity kept her from betraying any foolish annoyance, and the two were soon far on in an intimate conversation. Erard’s finality in judgments, and his conjuror’s trick of knowing all about herself without detailed confession, impressed Miss Anthon.
At last the visitors gathered themselves up, and Mrs. Anthon said a distant good-by to their host. Miss Anthon added to her mother’s conventionally expressed hope that they might see Erard again, a pointed invitation. “Come and show me what I ought to know.”
“Would you care to see Degas’s new picture?”
The girl answered with a look, with a flutter of astonishment. Who was this young man who could take her to Degas’s studio? As they moved into the hall, Erard found an opportunity to hand her the last Revue Internationale. “Perhaps you will care to look this over; it’s an article on Degas I wrote last spring.”
Then Pierre, the solemn man-servant, appeared with an old horn lantern, pulled back the long iron bolt, and prepared to escort the guests to the courtyard. In the hall a slender crane, supporting a flickering candle, reached out above the stairs. Erard stood under its shrine-like glimmer, wafting courtly cordialities to the descending guests. As Miss Anthon passed the bend in the stairs Pierre’s lantern threw a dash of light upon her dark strong form, while the plumes in her hat made magnificent shadows upon the stone walls. She swung her loose cape about her, as a young officer years before might have wrapped himself in his military cloak before venturing into the night-blast below. She looked up at him and smiled with the frank recognition one gives to a possible master. The last sound Erard heard, as the great doors creaked open below, was Mrs. Anthon’s shrill babble about dinner.
CHAPTER II
Leaving Wilbur and Mrs. Anthon to find a cab, Miss Anthon and her uncle proceeded across the Quarter by silent side streets, the old man turning instinctively here and there, until suddenly they came out on the Luxembourg gardens.
“I used to live up there,” Mr. Anthon remarked, pointing towards a deserted alley, “in number 75. That was before your father was married, when the family were living in New York. Father gave each of us five thousand dollars when we came of age. John went to St. Louis and began the brick business. I came over here—”
“Why did you give this up?” his niece asked eagerly, with a renewed appreciation of the artist’s delights.