voice. "You satisfy the
eye, mademoiselle. For me, that is already much, since it is as an
artist that I consider you first. And your age?"

She told him. He asked further questions, of her previous employment,
her nationality, and so forth, putting them perfunctorily as though
they were matters of no moment, and never removing his narrow eyes
from her face. Then, with short sliding steps, he came across the
parquet and sat down beside her on the Empire settee.

Annette backed to the end of it and sat defensively on the edge,
facing the strange being. He, crossing his thin legs, leaned with an
arm extended along the back of the settee and his long,
large-knuckled hand hanging limp. His sheep's face lay over on his
shoulder towards her; in that proximity its quality of feeble
grotesqueness was enhanced. It was like sitting in talk with a sick
ape.

"Curiouser and curiouser!" quoted Annette to herself. "I ought to
wake up next and find he really doesn't exist."

"Mademoiselle!" The creature began to speak again. "You are the ninth
who has come hither today seeking the post I have advertised. Some I
rejected because they failed to conciliate my eye; I cannot, you will
understand, be tormented by a presence which jars my sense."

He paused to hear her agree.

"And the others?" inquired Annette.

"A-ah!" The strange being sighed. "The others in each case, what a
disappointment! Girls beautiful, of a personality subdued and
harmonious, capable of taking their places in my environment without
doing violence to its completeness; but lacking the plastic and
responsive quality which the hand of the artist should find in his
material. Resistant they were resistant, mademoiselle, every one of
them."

"Silly of them," said Annette briefly. She was meeting the secret
stare of his half-closed eyes quite calmly now; she was beginning to
understand the furtive satire in the regard of the smooth footman who
had admitted each of those eight others in turn and seen their later
departure. "What was it they wouldn't do?" she inquired.

"Do!" The limp hand flapped despairingly; the thin voice ran shrill.
"I required nothing of them. One enters; I view her; I seat myself at
her side as I sit now with you; I seek in talk to explore her
resources of sentiment, of temperament, of sympathy. Perhaps I take
her hand" As though to illustrate the recital, his long hand dropped
suddenly and seized hers. He ceased to talk, surveying her wit