"Are you still there, Jean?" she called.
"And at your service," he replied.
"There is nothing I need, thank you. I just want to know what correction you were talking about."
"It is a private affair of Maurice's," stammered the young actor.
"I see, thank you."
After lunch the travellers set out for the Museum. Maurice was surprised and delighted by the instinct that guided his cousin towards the best that was in the pictures. He explained to her in the language affected by painters the reason for certain unreal shadows in a certain picture, and the necessity for them, the tact a painter must use in managing his light, the difficulty of foreshortening. He told her the well-known anecdote of Delacroix replying to the professor who objected that he had put a full face eye in a profile, "But, my dear master, I have tried everything and that is the only eye that gives the profile its proper value." And the professor of the great painter-to-be, after several sketches on the transparent paper over his pupil's canvas, said to him, "You are entirely right. Keep that full face eye."
They left the Museum, animated by different feelings. The more that Maurice discovered his cousin's noble qualities, the delicacy of her feelings, the strength of her loyalty, the more he felt of protective affection for this child who was so pure, so free, and who had made her entry so bravely into the whirlpool where things are generally turbulent, and most brutal in the brutal side of Parisian life. The admiration of his twenty years, for Esperance's alluring beauty, was purified into a friendship which he felt growing deeper and stronger. As to Jean Perliez, he had become more and more resigned that his love should remain forever in the shade, unlimited devotion for all time, all his being offered in sacrifice to the frail idol, who went her way star-gazing, unsuspecting all the time that she was trampling upon hearts under her foot.
CHAPTER XI
M. and Madame Darbois had received the telegram announcing the return of their daughter, and were at the station to meet her. Esperance saw them and would have jumped out before the train had fully slopped. Maurice held her just in time.
"No foolishness there, little cousin. Your bodyguards must return you intact to your family's four arms. One more moment of patience. What a hurry you are in to be rid of us."