Dosson had reappeared,
according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for
the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the
number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star,
seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at
Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he
had dropped into his comrade's ear that he would marry Francina Dosson
or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as it
had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their
separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects
appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking
of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner
at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow
himself had seen: he wouldn't controvert the lucid proposition that she
showed a "cutting" equal to any Greek gem.
In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began
to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward
the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the
lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the
representative of the Proberts was capable of that.
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