The protecting care that she had aforetime spent upon her disreputable old father, she now wound about this youth. Her mother-heart was no longer starved; forgot the suffering of rebuff; flinched no longer, scared by dread of Shame. ’Tis true, at a sudden noise she would start fearfully still, and her heart flutter sickeningly; yet, for the love of a youth, she would have plucked the beard of a sulphur-stinking devil, though the splendid insolence had scorched her sweet fingers to the bone. Her honeymoon was fragrant with the breath of Spring. With Noll she haunted the picture-galleries of the Luxembourg and roamed the polished oaken floors that are the slippery footway of the Louvre--stood with him before the Venus of Milo, where, on gazing awhile, the wondrous marble seems to breathe and move in all the majesty of human life--wandered before the canvases whereon the masters have wrought colour that makes music to the eyes--and loitered spell-bound a-top the broad flight of steps where, poised on the prow of an ancient battleship, the winged Nike of Samothrace stands like aerial goddess alighting from flight. Together they trudged the smiling streets of Paris that are the drawing-room of the world--loitered at her shop-windows--clambered up the steeps of Montmartre to the terrace, ill-kempt and weedy, where arose the gaunt and vasty scaffolding of the great church that the pious of France were building to the Sacred Heart in that strange mystic agony that would hope, by taking thought upon it and building in stone, to blot out the sins of the people--wandered about the banks of Seine, poring over the booksellers’ boxes that line the walls of the quays with evergreen hope of finding some good book or print--lingered in the high vaulted aisles of the cathedral of Notre Dame, listening to medieval litanies--loitered about the historic purlieus of the Rue St. Honoré and the Rue de Rivoli, and sought cheap dinners in the courts of the old dilapidated Palais Royal, all haunted with the ghosts of the Revolution and rustling, to quick ears, with the silk and satin of the seventeen hundreds. Careless of the elements, they sallied out to hang about the book-shops and rummage in the print-sellers’ trays, coming home with rare booty bought for a franc or so, to hang upon their walls--little masterpieces by Steinlen and others who are keeping alive the flame of art in France whilst the State is decorating the mediocrities; and so, roaming homewards with their prizes, they would make for their quarters in the lilac twilight to dine in some cheap place where students dine--or not to dine--clambering up their six flights of stairs at the end of all with jest and laughter and muddied boots, singing a snatch of song amidst their pleasant weariness, just from sheer gladness to be alive. Loneliness was wholly gone from the girl; she had with her always now, by her side, one to whom she could chatter, one who could share her silences.