"The picture is for mamma. I ask a favor on my own account."
"I refuse it beforehand. But you can tell me what it is, all the same."
"Well, then—the only part of your house that I have ever been in is this atelier. You can imagine I have a curiosity to see the rest."
"I see! you threaten me with a domiciliary visit without warning. Well! certainly, if that would give you any amusement. But my house contains nothing wonderful. I tell you that beforehand."
"One likes to know how one's friends look at home—in their own setting, and I have only seen you here at work in your atelier."
"The best point of view, believe me. But I am ready to do your bidding. Do you wish to see where I eat my dinner?" asked Marien, as he took her down the staircase leading to his dining-room.
Fraulein Schult would have liked to go with them—it was, besides, her duty. But she had not been asked to fulfil it. She hesitated a moment, and in that moment Jacqueline had disappeared. After consideration, the 'promeneuse' went on with her crochet, with a shrug of her shoulders which meant: "She can't come to much harm."
Seated in the studio, she heard the sound of their voices on the floor below. Jacqueline was lingering in the fencing-room where Marien was in the habit of counteracting by athletic exercises the effects of a too sedentary life. She was amusing herself by fingering the dumb-bells and the foils; she lingered long before some precious suits of armor. Then she was taken up into a small room, communicating with the atelier, where there was a fine collection of drawings by the old masters. "My only luxury," said Marien.
Mademoiselle Schult, getting impatient, began to roll up yards and yards of crochet, and coughed, by way of a signal, but remembering how disagreeable it would have been to herself to be interrupted in a tete-a- tete with her apothecary, she thought it not worth while to disturb them in these last moments. M. de Nailles's orders had been that she was to sit in the atelier. So she continued to sit there, doing what she had been told to do without any qualms of conscience.
When Marien had shown Jacqueline all his drawings he asked her: "Are you satisfied?"