not mean this as any lack of compliment to Madame la Comtesse," he added." "But you will understand, monsieur, that the face of a woman, even if it is beautiful—and no doubt madame's is beautiful—is not so interesting as a man's face. Of course, I would not say this before the other sex; but we are alone, and can speak without reserve."
"I perfectly understand," Lord Harlekston said, "I am going to the Pyrenees next Thursday for a fortnight. Would it be possible while I am away?"
"I am very busy," Carbouche persisted.
"Of course, we are only talking of a head; but even a sketch we should feel to be a great possession."
Carbouche looked at the fire, and hated the woman already. Still, deep in his soul there lurked a love of money, and the sum he had mentioned was a fabulous one for a portrait. No man in Europe but himself would have dared to ask it. He felt a triumph in remembering this, just as he felt a dogged triumph in adding to his wealth; it gave him a sense of defiance towards the world, of having conquered it, and put it under his feet—that insolent world that in the beginning had given him nothing, had made him suffer and feel keenly that he was nobody, that he had not even money to study as he had wished, that he had only, and that in secret, a sense of power, a knowledge that the time would come that was now here. Yes, it was now here, but he knew that on its way it had stripped itself of all the gifts fate usually made to other men. After all, what had he in life? His fame did not sweeten a single moment to any other person on earth. His great house was worse than a tomb; it would never hold any dead, save, perhaps, his own lonely body. His money had served him nothing except to strengthen his feeling of defiance, and loneliness, and hatred towards the world. And yet he thought scornfully he would leave the world richer than he had found it, possessed of things in which it took a pride, but each one would be a sign of his power, his greatness, his scorn. He was perfectly aware of what the world would owe him, the world that once had grudged him all things. But this woman, what had he to do with women that he should paint her portrait? With almost a start he turned to his visitor, who had been watching him curiously.
"Monsieur," he said, "I am not very gallant but I would prefer to keep to the work I have already arranged. I am, as I said before, much flattered that an English lady should desire to have a picture of herself at my hands; still, if I did a portrait at all, it would, perhaps, be only just that I should paint one of my own country-women."
"Then, let me give you the chance of paying a double compliment; for my wife is half French."
"Ah, madame is half French?"
"Her father was English, but her mother was French."
"It was so?" the painter repeated oddly, and he looked up as if an impossible idea were dawning upon him.
"When she was a girl, she lived at St. Germain en Laye, until she went to her father's people in England. They sent for her when she was nineteen or twenty."
"Ah, yes. I remember them sending for mademoiselle," Carbouche said. An expression of satisfaction broke over the Englishman's face.
"Now you understand, I see," he said, "my wife told me, if all other arguments failed, that I was to urge that you and she were old friends."
"Madame la Comtesse has an excellent memory," the painter said cynically, "it matches the other qualities I remember in mademoiselle."
"You were in the same pension?" Lord Harlekston said.
"I was staying with M. and Madame Carton at the Pavillon Rouge. I was young, monsieur, and venerated an old soldier above all things. Monsieur Carton was one; but he had belonged to the old order of things, and despised the new one. He had left Paris, and he and Madame lived quietly at the Pavillon Rouge on such money as they had saved or could gather in giving instruction. Monsieur taught some of the youths in the town, and madame received one or two pupils into her family. That was how I knew mademoiselle; she was staying there with her mother, Madame Brooke."
"I wonder you did not paint her then, she was very beautiful."
For a moment the expression on Carbouche's face softened as he answered: "Yes, she was very beautiful."
"But probably you were studying at one of the schools in Paris; I never heard who had the honour of being your master."
"I never owned one, monsieur, and belong to no school. If there is fire in oneself, one
