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Updated: June 14, 2025
That some one was a man about forty, whose pointed black beard was becoming slightly gray a man whom some people thought ugly, chiefly because they had never seen his somewhat irregular features illumined by a smile which, spreading from his lips to his eyes, lighted up his face and transformed it. The smile of Hubert Marien was rare, however.
"Oh! but you think of me sometimes, I suppose," said Jacqueline, softly, "for I share your time with him." "I think of you to blame you for taking me away from the fifteenth century," replied Hubert Marien, half seriously. "Ouf! There! it is done at last. That dimple I never could manage I have got in for better or for worse. Now you may fly off. I set you at liberty you poor little thing!"
Greek, too, was her small head, crowned only by her usual braid of hair, which she had simply gathered up so as to show the nape of her neck, which was perhaps the most beautiful thing in all her beautiful person. "Well! what do you think of me?" she said to Marien, with a searching glance to see how she impressed him a glance strangely like that of a grown woman. "Well! I can't get over it!
"Oh!" repeated Jacqueline, more shocked than ever. "I can alter it," said the painter, much amused by her extreme despair. But Marien thought that Jacqueline had not in the least that precocious air which her father attributed to her, when standing before him she gave herself up to thoughts the current of which he followed easily, watching on her candid face its changes of expression.
No one will see I have a long skirt on. But I shall be 'decolletee', at any rate. I shall wear a comb. No one would know the picture for me nobody! You yourself hardly knew me did you?" "Not at first sight. You are much altered." "Mamma will be amazed," said Jacqueline, clasping her hands. "It was a good idea!" "Amazed, I do not doubt," said Marien, somewhat anxiously.
It was over, she had flung to the winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers. The most horrible thing in this unending warfare we call love is that we too often repay to those who love us the harm that has been done us by those whom we have loved.
Now I know what to expect " "That is nonsense," replied Marien "mere foolishness. You jealous! jealous of a baby whom I knew when she wore white pinafores, who has grown up under my very eyes? But, so far as I am concerned, she exists no longer. She is not, she never will be in my eyes, a woman. I shall think of her as playing with her doll, eating sugar-plums, and so on." Jacqueline grew faint.
Marien, as an artist, had great pleasure in studying the delicate outline of that graceful head surmounted by thick tresses, with rebellious ringlets rippling over the brow before they were gathered into the thick braid that hung behind; and Jacqueline, although she appeared to be wholly occupied with her guests, felt the gaze that was fixed upon her, and was conscious of its magnetic influence, from which nothing would have induced her to escape even had she been able.
As she thought thus Jacqueline noiselessly opened the door of the salon, over which, on the inner side, hung a thick plush 'portiere'. But as she was about to lift it, the sound of a voice within made her stand motionless. She recognized the tones of Marien. He was pleading, imploring, interrupted now and then by the sharp and still angry voice of her mamma.
She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles, and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon, or the arrangement of a nosegay. "This is all I retain of your lessons," she said sometimes to Hubert Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his advice as to how to prepare herself for the "struggle for life."
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