THE young ladies consented to return to the Avenue de Villiers, and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was smoking cigarettes with a friend, while coffee was served to the two gentlemen (it was just after luncheon), on a vast divan, covered with scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. She thought him very pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and who had already come too often to his studio to pick up “glimpses” (the painter wondered how in the world he had picked her up), this charming candidate for portraiture struck Charles Waterlow on the spot as an adorable model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes off her while her own rested, afresh, on several finished and unfinished canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend, at the end of five minutes, the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie learned that his name (she thought it singular) was Gaston Probert. Mr. Probert was a kind-eyed, smiling youth, who fingered the points of his moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he pronounced the American language (so at least it seemed to Francie) as if it had been French.

After Francie had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack (her father, on this occasion, was not of the party), the two young men, falling back upon their divan, broke into expressions of æsthetic rapture, declared that the girl had qualities—oh, but qualities, and a charm of line! They remained there for an hour, contemplating these rare properties in the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from their conversation (though, as regards much of it, only perhaps with the aid of a grammar and dictionary) that the young lady possessed plastic treasures of the highest order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious.