went to bed.
But Miss Helen did not know that when she had looked after the
retreating figure of her protector as he descended the stairs that night
that he was really carrying away on those broad shoulders the character
she had so laboriously gained during her four years' solitude. For when
she came down the next morning the concierge bowed to her with an air
of easy, cynical abstraction, the result of a long conversation with his
wife the night before. He had taken Helen's part with a kindly
cynicism. "Ah! what would you--it was bound to come. The affair of
the Conservatoire had settled that. The poor child could not starve;
penniless, she could not marry. Only why consort with other swallows
under the eaves when she could have had a gilded cage on the first
etage?" But girls were so foolish--in their first affair; then it was
always LOVE! The second time they were wiser. And this maimed warrior
and painter was as poor as she. A compatriot, too; well, perhaps
that saved some scandal; one could never know what the Americans were
accustomed to do. The first floor, which had been inclined to be civil
to the young teacher, was more so, but less respectful; one or two young
men were tentatively familiar until they looked in her gray eyes and
remembered the broad shoulders of the painter. Oddly enough, only
Mademoiselle Fifine, of her own landing, exhibited any sympathy with
her, and for the first time Helen was frightened. She did not show it,
however, only she changed her lodgings the next day. But before she left
she had a few moments' conversation with the concierge and an exchange
of a word or two with some of her fellow lodgers. I have already hinted
that the young lady had great precision of statement; she had a pretty
turn for handling colloquial French and an incisive knowledge of French
character. She left No. 34, Rue de Frivole, working itself into a white
rage, but utterly undecided as to her real character.
But all this and much more was presently blown away in the hot breath
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