'Take the plates--and this potted meat. Now for the _petit vin_ my doctor cousin brought me last week from the family estate. I have stowed it away somewhere. Ah! here it is. We are from the Gironde--at least my mother was. My father was nobody--_bourgeois_ from tip to toe, though he called himself an artist. It was a _mesalliance_ for her when she married him. Oh, he led her a life!--she died when I was small, and last year _he_ died, eleven months ago. I did my best to cry. _Impossible!_ He had made Maman and me cry too much. And now I am perfectly alone in the world, and perfectly well-behaved. Monsieur Prudhomme may talk--I snap my finger at him. You will have your ideas, of course. No matter! If you eat my salt, you will hardly be able to speak ill of me.' 'Mademoiselle!' cried David, inwardly cursing his shyness--a shyness new to him--and his complete apparent lack of anything to say, or the means of saying it. 'Oh, don't protest!--after that journey you can't afford to waste your breath. Move a little, Monsieur--let me open the other door of the cupboard--there are some chocolates worth eating on that back shelf. Do you admire my _armoire?_ It is old Breton--it belonged to my grandmother, who was from Morbihan. She brought her linen in it. It is cherry wood, you see, mounted in silver. You may search Paris for another like it. Look at that flower work on the panels. It is not _banal_ at all--it has character--there is real design in it. Now take the chocolates, and these sardine--put them down over there. As for me, I make the coffee.' She ran over to the spirit lamp, and set it going; she measured out the coffee; then sitting down on the floor, she took the bellows and blew up the logs. 'Tell me your name, Monsieur?' she said suddenly, looking round. David gave it in full, his own name and Louie's. Then he walked up to her, making an effort to be at his ease, and said something about their French descent. His mode of speaking was slow and bookish--correct, but wanting in life. After this year's devotion to French books, after all his compositions with Barbier, he had supposed himself so familiar with French! With the woman from the _loge_, indeed, he could have talked at large, had she been conversational instead of rude. But here, with this little glancing creature, he felt himself plunged in a perfect quagmire of ignorance and stupidity. When he spoke of being half French, she became suddenly grave, and studied him with an intent piercing look. 'No,' she said slowly, 'no, at bottom you are not French a bit, you are all English, I feel it. I should fight you--_a outrance! Grive_--what a strange name! It's a bird's name. You are not like it--you do not belong to it. But _David_!--ah, that is better. _Voyons_!' She sprang up, ran over to the furthest easel, and, routing about amongst its disorder of prints and photographs, she hit upon one, which she held up triumphantly.