her there and she came back to the
mirror that hung above her dressing-table.

"Let's have a look at you!" said Annette to the reflection that
confronted her.

She stood, examining it seriously. It was, she thought, quite
presentable, a trim, quiet figure of a girl who might reasonably ask
work and a wage; she could not find anything in it to account for
those six weeks of refusals. She perked her chin and forced her face
to look assured and spirited, watching the result in the mirror.

"Ye-es," she said at last, and nodded to the reflection. "You'll have
to do; but I wish I wish you hadn't got that sort of doomed look.
Good-bye, old girl!"

At the foot of the stairs, in the open door of that room which was
labeled "Bureau," where a bed and a birdcage and a smell of food kept
company with the roll-top desk, stood the patronne, Madame Mardel.
She moved a little forth into the passage as Annette approached.

"Good morning, mademoiselle. Again a charming day!"

She was a large woman, grossly fleshy, with clothes that strained to
creaking point about her body and gaped at the fastenings. Her vast
face, under her irreproachably neat hair the hair of a Parisienne was
swarthy and plethoric, with the jowl of a bulldog and eyes tiny and
bright. Annette knew her for an artist in "extras," a vampire that
had sucked her purse lean with deft overcharges, a creature without
mercy or morals. But the daily irony of her greeting had the grace,
the cordial inflexion, of a piece of distinguished politeness.

"Charming," agreed Annette. She produced the bill. "I may as well pay
this now," she suggested.

Madame's chill and lively eyes were watching her face, estimating her
solvency in the light of Madame's long experience of misfortune and
despair. She shrugged a huge shoulder deprecatingly.

"There is no hurry," she said. She always said that. "Still, since
mademoiselle is here."

Annette followed her into the bureau, that dimlighted sanctuary of
Madame's real life. Below the half-raised blind in the window the
canaries in their cage rustled and bickered; unwashed plates were
crowded on the table; the big unmade bed added a flavor of its own to
the atmosphere. Madame eased herself, panting, into the chair before
the desk, revealing the great rounded expanse of her back with its
row of straining buttons and lozenge-shaped revelations of
underwear. With the businesslike deliberation of a person who
transacts a serious affair w