Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/216



HE Barrys' apartment was on the third floor of an old hotel in one of the quietest quarters of the town; an apartment wanting in ormolu and velvet, but open and airy; more hospitable, far, Steven thought as he entered, than Dora's mouse-trap entresol in the best situation in Paris. He was late: Mr. Barry, turning round from the card-table, rallied him as he came in about his fashionable hours: and all the guests, who were coming to the "reception" (four or five Frenchmen, none of them in evening dress), were already assembled. Mademoiselle Barry, alone at a little table by the fireside, was drawing. The lamp placed close at her left hand—the methodical arrangement of her pencils and papers—the silence of the room; the faces of the men around the card-table—gave Steven, he knew not why, the idea that the scene was a habitual one in the girl's life. He went up to her at once, and she put down her pencil and bade him, with a friendly-enough smile, take a chair at her side.

"I needn't interrupt you," said Steven, looking over her work. "Go on with your drawing; I should like to watch you."

"But I can't draw when I am watched," said Mademoiselle Barry, "and I am so tired that I am glad to stop. After all you were forced to go through in the Luxembourg," she added, "I shouldn't think you wanted anything more in the shape of pictures to-day?"

"I 'went through' what gave me pleasure," said Steven in his frank way. "This morning made me feel that if I was ever so little better educated, I might get to like pictures—after a fashion of my own. Let me look at your drawing, please. Why, what is it done on—wood? I thought people drew on canvas, or cardboard, or tackle of that kind."

"People who draw for money, draw on the tackle their masters bid them use," said Mademoiselle Barry, smiling a little smile to herself at the Englishman's ignorance. "I'm not a young lady artist, sir. I make money, good gold pieces of twenty francs, by my drawings. This sketch will appear publicly as one of the chef