"It is detestable. I shall have to go back some day and renew my impressions of Florence—see once more the Piazze of the Signora and San Marco—and then I shall begin my picture all over again. Let us go together—will you?"
"Oh!" she cried, fervently, "think of seeing Italy! —and with you!"
"It might not be so great a pleasure as you think. Nothing is such a bore as to travel with people who are pervaded by one idea, and my 'idee fixe' is my picture—my great Dominican. He has taken complete possession of me—he overshadows me. I can think of nothing but him."
"Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose," said Jacqueline, softly, "for I share your time with him."
"I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth century," replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. "Ouf!—There! it is done at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better or for worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty—you poor little thing!"
She seemed in no hurry to profit by his permission. She stood perfectly still in the middle of the studio.
"Do you think I have posed well, faithfully, and with docility all these weeks?" she asked at last.
"I will give you a certificate to that effect, if you like. No one could have done better."
"And if the certificate is not all I want, will you give me some other present?"
"A beautiful portrait—what can you want more?"