His mother looked up. 'What is rather good?'
He raised the fan and pointed, like an artist, at the bare arms and the line of the falling shoulders under the fine cambric bodice. She began to laugh.
'Yes, but look here.' She pointed to her long neck, where the fine wrinkles marked her age. 'But after all,'... you have the good looks, so what does it matter? Such was her thought, but she did not express it. A brilliant talker, perfectly trained in the fibs and commonplaces of society, a perfect adept in expression and suggestion, she was left without words for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced. And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew--though indeed there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out--all her coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young fellow in the correct attire of the modern artist, with his slight beard and close-cut hair, who showed in mien and bearing that soldierly grace which our young men of the day get from their service as volunteers.
'Is your first floor let?' asked the mother at last.
'Let! let! Not a sign of it! All the bills and advertisements no go! "I don't know what is the matter with them; but they don't come," as Védrine said at his private exhibition.'
He laughed quietly, at an inward vision of Védrine among his enamels and his sculptures, calm, proud, and self-assured, wondering without anger at the non-appearance of the public. But Madame Astier did not laugh. That splendid first floor empty for the last two years! In the Rue Fortuny! A magnificent situation--a house in the style of Louis XII.--a house built by her son! Why, what did people want? The same people, doubtless, who did not go to Védrine. Biting off the thread with which she had been sewing, she said:
'Quite; but it would want money to keep it up.'
The people at the Crédit Foncier would not be satisfied. And the contractors were upon him--four hundred pounds for carpenter's work due at the end of the month, and he hadn't a penny of it.