"I know it's not much of a position to offer you," said he, almost apologetically, "but if you care to accept it----"
"Of your assistant?" she asked, as though the idea had never entered her head.
"Why, yes. If you will consent to a month of very hard work. You would have to learn a little elementary juggling. You would have to give me instantaneous replies in act and speech. But if you would give yourself up to me I could teach you."
"But, _mon pauvre André_," she said, with an astonished air, "this is the last thing I ever dreamed of. I am so ignorant. I should put you to shame."
"Oh no, you wouldn't," said he, confidently. "I know my business. Wait. _Les affaires sont les affaires_. I should have to give you a little contract. Let us see. For the remainder of my tour--ten weeks--ten francs a day with hotel _en pension_ and railway fares."
To Elodie, independent waif in theatre-land, this was wealth beyond her dreams. She stretched both hands across the table.
"Do you mean that? It is true? And, if I please you, you will keep me always?"
"Why not?" said Andrew. "And, if you show talent, we may come to a better arrangement for the next tour."
He made a deprecating gesture and grinned in his charming way. But Elodie's intuition taught her that there was the stern purpose of a man behind the grin. She had imposed her helplessness on him this once. But if she failed him she would not have, professionally, a second chance.
"I insist on your having talent," said Andrew.
The walk home to her dingy lodgings repeated itself. She felt very humble yet triumphant. More than ever did she regard him as a god who had raised her, by a touch, from despair and starvation to hope and plenty, and in her revulsion of gratitude she could have taken both his hands and passionately kissed them. And yet she was proudly conscious of something within her, unconquerably feminine, which had touched his godship and wrought the miracle.
They halted in the narrow, squalid street, before the dark entry of the house where she lodged. Andrew eyed the poverty-stricken hole in disgust. Obviously she had touched the depths.
"To-morrow you must move," said he. "I shall arrange a room for you at the hotel. We shall have much business to discuss. Can you be there at ten o'clock?"