"One is young, one is pretty, one needs new dresses and fresh gloves; one can't wear shabby gowns among the splendors of the Louvre." "But your daughter earns enough to pay for her own clothes," said Newman.
M.Nioche looked at him with weak, uncertain eyes.

He would have liked to be able to say that his daughter's talents were appreciated, and that her crooked little daubs commanded a market; but it seemed a scandal to abuse the credulity of this free-handed stranger, who, without a suspicion or a question, had admitted him to equal social rights.

He compromised, and declared that while it was obvious that Mademoiselle Noemie's reproductions of the old masters had only to be seen to be coveted, the prices which, in consideration of their altogether peculiar degree of finish, she felt obliged to ask for them had kept purchasers at a respectful distance.

"Poor little one!" said M.Nioche, with a sigh; "it is almost a pity that her work is so perfect! It would be in her interest to paint less well." "But if Mademoiselle Noemie has this devotion to her art," Newman once observed, "why should you have those fears for her that you spoke of the other day ?" M.Nioche meditated: there was an inconsistency in his position; it made him chronically uncomfortable.

Though he had no desire to destroy the goose with the golden eggs--Newman's benevolent confidence--he felt a tremulous impulse to speak out all his trouble.