But when he had rescued Aline from the limbo over the small apothecary's shop, as thoughtlessly and as gallantly as his father before him had rescued the delicate lady from the trials of theatrical vagabondage, he found himself face to face with a perplexing problem. That first night he had risen from an amorphous bed he had arranged for himself on the studio floor, and entered his own bedroom on tiptoe, and looked with pathetic helplessness on the tiny child asleep beneath his bedclothes. If it had been a boy, he would have had no particular puzzle. A boy could have been stowed in a corner of the studio, where he could have learned manners and the fear of God and the way of smiling at adversity. He would have profited enormously, as Jimmie felt assured, by his education. But with a girl it was vastly different. An endless vista of shadowy, dreamy, delicate possibilities perplexed him. He conceived women as beings ethereal, with a range of exquisite emotions denied to masculine coarseness. Even the Rue Bonaparte had not destroyed his illusion, and he still attributed to the fair Maenads of the Bal des Quatre-z' Arts the lingering fragrance of the original Psyche. Of course Jimmie was a fool, as ten years afterwards Norma had decided; but this view of himself not occurring to him, he had to manage according to his lights. Here was this mysterious embryo goddess entirely dependent on him. No corner of the studio and rough-and-tumble discipline for her. She must sleep on down and be covered with silk; the airs of heaven must not visit her cheek too roughly; the clatter of the brazen world must not be allowed to deafen her to her own sweet inner harmonies. Jimmie was sorely perplexed. His charwoman next morning could throw no light on the riddle. She had seven children of her own, four of them girls, and they had to get along the best way they could. She was of opinion that if let alone and just physicked when she had any complaint, Aline would grow up of her own accord. Jimmie said that this possibility had not struck him, but doubtless the lady was right. Could she tell him how many times a day a little girl ought to be fed and what she was to eat? The charwoman's draft upon her own family experiences enlightened Jimmie so far that he put a sovereign into her hand to provide a dinner for her children. After that he consulted her no more. It was an expensive process.