In the Quarter | Page 4

Singing too! We'll see about that!"
The singing continued, a girl's voice, only passably trained, but
certainly fresh and sweet.
Gethryn began to listen, reluctantly and ungraciously. There was a
pause. "Now she's going to stop. It's time," he muttered. But the piano
began again -- a short prelude which he knew, and the voice was soon
in the midst of the Dream Song from "La Belle Hélène."
Gethryn rose and walked to his window, threw it open and leaned out.
An April night, soft and delicious. The air was heavy with perfume
from the pink and white chestnut blossoms. The roof dripped with
moisture. Far down in the dark court the gas-jets flickered and flared.
From the distance came the softened rumble of a midnight cab, which,
drawing nearer and nearer and passing the hôtel with a rollicking rattle
of wheels and laughing voices, died away on the smooth pavement by
the Luxembourg Gardens. The voice had stopped capriciously in the
middle of the song. Gethryn turned back into the room whistling the air.
His eye fell on Satan sitting behind his bars in crumpled malice.
"Poor old chap," laughed the master, "want to come out and hop around
a bit? Here, Gummidge, we'll remove temptation out of his way," and
he lifted the docile tabby, who increased the timbre of her song to an
ecstatic squeal at his touch, and opening his bedroom door, gently
deposited her on his softest blankets. He then reinstated the raven on
his bust of Pallas, and Satan watched him from thence warily as he
fussed about the studio, sorting brushes, scraping a neglected palette,

taking down a dressing gown, drawing on a pair of easy slippers,
opening his door and depositing his boots outside. When he returned
the music had begun again.
"What on earth does she mean by singing at a quarter to one o'clock?"
he thought, and went once more to the window. "Why -- that is really
beautiful."
Oui! c'est un rêve, Oui! c'est un rêve doux d'amour. La nuit lui prête
son mystère, Il doit finir -- il doit finir avec le jour.
The song of Hélène ceased. Gethryn leaned out and gazed down at the
lighted windows under his. Suddenly the light went out. He heard
someone open the window, and straining his eyes, could just discern
the dim outline of a head and shoulders, unmistakably those of a girl.
She had perched herself on the windowsill. Presently she began to hum
the air, then to sing it softly. Gethryn waited until the words came
again:
Oui, c'est un rêve --
and then struck in with a very sweet baritone:
Oui, c'est un rêve --
She never moved, but her voice swelled out fresh and clear in answer to
his, and a really charming duet came to a delightful finish. Then she
looked up. Gethryn was reckless now.
"Shall it be, then, only a dream?" he laughed. Was it his fate that made
him lean out and whisper, "Is it, then, only a dream, Hélène?"
There was nothing but the rustling of the chestnut branches to answer
his folly. Not another sound. He was half inclined to shut his window
and go in, well satisfied with the silence and beginning to feel sleepy.
All at once from below came a faint laugh, and as he leaned out he
caught the words:

"Paris, Hélène bids you good night!"
"Ah, Belle Hélène!" -- he began, but was cut short by the violent
opening of a window opposite.
"Bon dieu de bon dieu!" howled an injured gentleman. "To sleep is
impossible, tas d'imbeciles! -- "
And Hélène's window closed with a snap.
Two
The day broke hot and stifling. The first sunbeams which chased the
fog from bridge and street also drove the mists from the cool thickets of
the Luxembourg Garden, and revealed groups of dragoons picketed in
the shrubbery.
"Dragoons in the Luxembourg!" cried the gamins to each other. "What
for?"
But even the gamins did not know -- yet.
At the great Ateliers of Messieurs Bouguereau and Lefebvre the first
day of the week is the busiest -- and so, this being Monday, the studios
were crowded.
The heat was suffocating. The walls, smeared with the refuse of a
hundred palettes, fairly sizzled as they gave off a sickly odor of paint
and turpentine. Only two poses had been completed, but the tired
models stood or sat, glistening with perspiration. The men drew and
painted, many of them stripped to the waist. The air was heavy with
tobacco smoke and the respiration of some two hundred students of
half as many nationalities.
"Dieu! quel chaleur!" gasped a fat little Frenchman, mopping his
clipped head and breathing hard.
"Clifford," he inquired in English, "ees eet zat you haf a so