ieur; already early this morning; you were at the market, so
Mademoiselle settled the bill."

"Mademoiselle Jehane?" the stranger looks up sharply.

"My niece, monsieur; you have perhaps heard of her, for I see by your
easel you are an artist. She is supposed to be of a rare beauty; I think
it myself." Jean Potin keeps up a running flow of talk as he conducts
his visitor down the long bare passages, past blistered yellow doors.

"It is a double room I must give you, vacated, as you heard, but this
very morning. They were going to stay longer, Monsieur and Madame
Guillaumet, but of a sudden she changed her mind. Oh, she was of a
temper!" Potin raises expressive eyes heavenwards. "It is ever so when
May weds with December."

"He was much older than his wife, then?" queries the artist, politely
feigning an interest he is far from feeling.

"_Mais non, parbleu!_ It was she who was the older--by some fifteen
years; and not a beauty. But rich--he knew what he was about, giving his
smooth cheek for her smooth louis!"

Left alone, Lou Arnaud proceeds to unpack his knapsack; he lingers over
it as long as possible; the task awaiting him below is no pleasant one.
Finally he descends. The small smoky _salle a manger_ is full of people.
There is much talk and laughter going on; the clatter of knives and
forks. At the desk near the door, a young girl is busy with the
accounts. Her very pale gold hair, parted and drawn loosely back over
the ears, casts a faint shadow on her pure, white skin. Arnaud, as he
chooses a seat, looks at her critically.

"Bah, she is insignificant!" he thinks. "What can have possessed
Claude?"

Suddenly she raises her eyes. They meet his in a long, steady gaze. Then
once again the lids are lowered.

The artist sets down his glass with a hand that shakes. He is not
imaginative, as a rule, but when one sees the soul of a mocking devil
look out, dark and compelling, from the face of a Madonna, one is
disconcerted.

He wonders no more what had possessed Claude. On his way to the door a
few moments later, he pauses at her desk.

"Monsieur wishes to order breakfast for to-morrow morning?"

"Monsieur wishes to speak with you."

She smiles demurely. Many have wished to speak with her. Arnaud divines
her thoughts.

"My name is Lou Arnaud!" he adds meaningly.

"Ah!" she ponders on this for an instant; then: "It is a warm night; if
you will seat yourself at one of the little tables in the courtyard at