“Thank you,” answered Madame Fleury, calmly. “In a house like this, there are certain lodgers whom I am compelled to call on occasionally, in the way of business.” “Do you know, Madame,” continued Marsac, who had not ceased to examine Madame Fleury’s features as if she were a beautiful portrait or a statue which he had never set eyes on before, “there is a picture in the Salon this year that might be taken for you? It is called ‘Springtime,’--a young girl standing under an almond-tree in bloom. The girl’s face--so fresh, so lovely--is simply yours.” Madame Fleury’s discouraging reply to this was, “Business is business, Monsieur Marsac, and must be attended to.” Marsac kept on as if he had not heard a word. “I can’t, for the life of me, recall the artist’s name; but I remarked aloud, ‘Madame Fleury must have sat for this charming face;’ and a very distinguished-looking man who stood next me said in English, ‘Then I would give a thousand pounds to know Madame Fleury!’” “I wish you had accepted his offer,” responded Madame Fleury, in a tone that would have disconcerted a Talleyrand, “for never in my life would a thousand pounds or even a thousand francs be more acceptable.” Marsac, however, not at all abashed, exclaimed enthusiastically: “Then, all you have to do is to offer to pose for a nymph or a goddess. Bouguereau and all those high-priced fellows will simply be tumbling over one another in their eagerness to paint you.” “Monsieur Marsac,” said Madame Fleury, in a tone of velvet softness which Marsac perfectly understood and shuddered to hear, “I am talking business.” “And I am talking art,” replied poor Marsac. “If you will kindly recall the date,” continued Madame Fleury. Marsac, taking up an almanac, began turning the leaves. “This is the 20th of February,” he mused. “Let me see--what happened on the 20th of February? Ah, I have it! It is your twenty-fifth birthday, and you have come to receive our felicitations.” “Nonsense, Monsieur Marsac!” replied Madame Fleury, with the same tone of deadly sweetness. “It is the day your rent is due; and I have come to see if you are prepared to pay it, and also the arrears of two months you still owe.” Marsac merely shook his head, and for several minutes there was unbroken silence in the room, each meanwhile closely attentive to the other. At last Madame Fleury spoke. “It seems to me that two young men with your talents and character,--for I have found you both to have good characters, except for this rent business,--and of good families, should be able to make a better living out of journalism than you do.” “Ah, Madame,” answered Marsac, sorrowfully, “modern journalism has but one essential,--it requires a man to be an accomplished, ready, and felicitous liar; and neither of us is that.” “Then why don’t you--ahem!--try to acquire that one essential?”