But her training had been terribly defective. No one had ever controlled her. She had been mistress of her father's house and queen of his little coterie; with her quiet, unerring judgment, she had made her own estimate of the strength, the mind, the intellect of each one with whom she came in contact, and the result was always favorable to herself--she saw no one superior to herself. Then the society in which her father had delighted was the worst possible for her; she reigned supreme over them all--clever, gifted artists, good-natured Bohemians, who admired and applauded her, who praised every word that fell from her lips, who honestly believed her to be one of the marvels of the world, who told her continually that she was one of the most beautiful, most talented, most charming of mortals, who applauded every daring sentiment instead of telling her plainly that what was not orthodox was seldom right--honest Bohemians, who looked upon the child as a wonder, and puzzled themselves to think what destiny was high enough for her--men whose artistic tastes were gratified by the sight of her magnificent loveliness, who had for her the deepest, truest, and highest respect, who never in her presence uttered a syllable that they would not have uttered in the presence of a child--good-natured Bohemians, who sometimes had money and sometimes had none, who were always willing to share their last _sou_ with others more needy than themselves, who wore shabby, threadbare coats, but who knew how to respect the pure presence of a pure girl. Pauline had received a kind of education. Her father's friends discussed everything--art, science, politics, and literature--in her presence; they discussed the wildest stories, they indulged in unbounded fun and satire, they were of the wittiest even as they were of the cleverest of men. They ridiculed unmercifully what they were pleased to call the "regulations of polite society;" they enjoyed unvarnished truth--as a rule, the more disagreeable the truth the more they delighted in telling it. They scorned all etiquette, they pursued all dandies and belles with terrible sarcasm; they believed in every wild or impossible theory that had ever been started; in fact, though honest as the day, honorable, and true, they were about the worst associates a young girl could have had to fit her for the world. The life she led among them had been one long romance, of which she had been queen. The house in the Rue d'Orme had once been a grand mansion; it was filled with quaint carvings, old tapestry, and the relics of a by-gone generation. The rooms were large--most of them had been turned into studios. Some of the finest of modern pictures came from the house in the Rue d'Orme, although, as a rule, the students who worked there were not wealthy.