She went over to her métier and held up the most beautiful piece of embroidery I had yet seen.
“Courage, darleen. The sun shine again very soon, I sink. Now we can sell this. I am so glad. It seem zaire is so leetle I can do.”
“No, no; I can’t let you sell it. I don’t want to part with any of your work. Let me take it to the Mont-de-Piété. Then we can get it back some day.”
“But zaire we only get half what we have if we sell it.”
“Never mind. Perhaps it will be enough to tide us over for a day or two.”
I realised thirty francs for the cushion cover, paid the rent, and was about seven francs to the good. “We can go on for another week anyway,” I said.
During this black month I only saw Lorrimer once. It was on the Boul’ Mich’ and he was in a great hurry, but he stopped a moment.
“I say, Madden, was it you who sent me the Dago skirt? Where did you dig her up? She’s a good type and makes a splendid foil to Rougette. I’ve changed my plans and begun a new Salon picture with both girls in it. Come up and see it soon. It’s great. I’m sure the crisis in my fortune has come at last. Well, good-bye now. Thanks for sending me the model.”
He was off before I could say a word; but in spite of the wondrous picture I did not go to his studio.
I had finished my Demi-gods in the Dust articles. As far as finish and force went I thought them the best work I had ever done. Now I began a series of genre stories of the Paris slums, called Chronicles of the Café Pas Chemise. I rarely went out. I worked all the time, or tried to work all the time. I might as well work, I thought, for I could not sleep. That worried me more than anything, my growing insomnia. For hours every night I would lie with nerves a-tingle, hearing the noctambules in the rue Monge, the thundering crash of the motor-buses, the shrill outcries from the boozing den below, the awakening of the chiffoniers in the rue Saint-Médard: all the thousand noises of nocturnal mystery, cruelty and crime. Then I would rise in the morning distracted and wretched, and not till I had disposed of two big cups of coffee would I feel able to begin work again.