"Don't look at them!" said Cartaret. "They're merely sketches." But Fourget had already looked. He was on his feet. He was bobbing from one to the other, his lean hands adjusting his glasses, his shoulders stooped, his nose thrust out. He was uttering little cries of approval. "But this is good! It is good, then. This is first-rate. This is of an excellence!" "They're not for sale," said Cartaret. "_Hein?_" Fourget wheeled. "If they are not for sale, they are for what, then?" "They--they are merely sketches, I tell you. I was trying my hand at a new method; but I find there is nothing in it." Fourget was unbuttoning his short frock-coat. He was reaching for his wallet. "I tell you there is everything in it. There is the sure touch in it, the clear vision, the sympathy. There is reputation in it. In fine, there is money." He had the wallet out as he concluded. Cartaret shook his head. "Oh," said Fourget, the dealer in him partially overcoming the lover of art, "not much as yet; not a great deal of money. You have still a long way to go; but you have found the road, monsieur, and I want to help you on your journey. Come, now." He nodded to the first portrait. "What do you ask for that?" "I don't want to sell it." "Poof! We shall not haggle. Tell Fourget what you had thought of asking. Do not be modest. Tell me--and I will give you half." He kept it up as long as he could; he tried at last to buy the least of the preliminary sketches of the Rose-Lady; he offered what, to Cartaret, were dazzling prices; but Cartaret was not to be shaken: these experiments were not for sale. Fourget was first disappointed, then puzzled. His enthusiasm had been genuine; but could it be possible that Dieudonné was mistaken? Was Cartaret not starving? The old man was beginning to button his coat when a new idea struck him. "Who was your model?" he asked abruptly. "I--I had none," Cartaret stammered. "Ah!"--Fourget peered hard at him through those glistening spectacles. "You painted them from memory?" "Yes." Cartaret felt his face redden. "From imagination, I mean." Then Fourget understood. Perhaps he had merely the typical Frenchman's love of romance, which ceases only with the typical Frenchman's life; or perhaps he remembered his own youth in Besançon, when he, too, had wanted to be an artist and when, among the vines on the hillside, little Rosalie smiled at him and kissed his ambition away--little Rosalie Poullot, dust and ashes these twenty years in the Cimetière du Mont Parnasse.... He turned to a pile of pot-boilers. He took one almost at random. "This one," he said, "I should like to buy it." It was the worst pot-boiler of the lot. Before the portraits, it was hopeless. Cartaret half understood. "No," he said; "you don't really want it." Seraphin had been right: the young man was proud. "How then?" demanded Fourget. "This also did you paint not-to-sell?"