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A Son
of the Immortals
By
LOUIS TRACY
Author of "The Stowaway," "The Message,"
"The Wings of the Morning," etc.
Illustrations by
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
New York
Edward J. Clode
Publisher
Copyright, 1909, by
EDWARD J. CLODE
Entered at Stationers' Hall
[Illustration: The sight of Alec and his fair burden brought a cheer
from the crowd
Frontispiece]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FORTUNE TELLER 1
II. MONSEIGNEUR 22
III. IN THE ORIENT EXPRESS 44
IV. THE WHITE CITY 64
V. FELIX SURMOUNTS A DIFFICULTY 89
VI. JOAN GOES INTO SOCIETY 112
VII. JOAN BECOMES THE VICTIM OF CIRCUMSTANCES 132
VIII. SHOWING HOW THE KING KEPT HIS APPOINTMENT 154
IX. MUTTERINGS OF STORM 176
X. WHEREIN THE SHADOWS DEEPEN 196
XI. JOAN DECIDES 221
XII. THE STORM BREAKS 241
XIII. WHEREIN A REASON IS GIVEN FOR JOAN'S FLIGHT 263
XIV. THE BROKEN TREATY 284
XV. THE ENVOY 310
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The sight of Alec and his fair burden brought a
cheer from the crowd _Frontispiece_
PAGE
"Gentlemen, here stands Alexis Delgrado" 75
Beaumanoir and Felix fortified the position 153
Joan laughed at Alec's masterful methods 199
Stampoff saluted the King in silence 268
In a few minutes the three were securely bound 298
He felt the thrill that ran through her veins 306
A SON OF THE IMMORTALS
CHAPTER I
THE FORTUNE TELLER
On a day in May, not so long ago, Joan Vernon, coming out into the
sunshine from her lodging in the Place de la Sorbonne, smiled a morning
greeting to the statue of Auguste Comte, founder of Positivism. It would
have puzzled her to explain what Positivism meant, or why it should be
merely positive and not stoutly comparative or grandly superlative. As a
teacher, therefore, Comte made no appeal. She just liked the bland look
of the man, was pleased by the sleekness of his white marble. He seemed
to be a friend, a counselor, strutting worthily on a pedestal labeled
"_Ordre et Progres_"; for Joan was an artist, not a philosopher.
Perhaps there was an underthought that she and Comte were odd fish to be
at home together in that placid backwater of the Latin Quarter. Next
door to the old-fashioned house in which she rented three rooms was a
cabaret, a mere wreck of a wineshop, apparently cast there by the
torrent of the Boule Mich, which roared a few yards away. Its luminous
sign, a foaming tankard, showed gallantly by night, but was garish by
day, since gas is akin to froth, to which the sun is pitiless. But the
cabaret had its customers, quiet folk who gathered in the evening to
gossip and drink strange beverages, whereas its nearest neighbor on the
boulevard side was an empty tenement, a despondent ghost to-day, though
once it had rivaled the flaunting tankard. Its frayed finery told of gay
sparks extinguished. A flamboyant legend declared, "Ici on chante, on
boit, on s'amuse(?)" Joan always smirked a little at that suggestive
note of interrogation, which lent a world of meaning to the
half-obliterated statement that Madame Lucette would appear "tous les
soirs dans ses chansons d'actualites."
Nodding to Leontine, the cabaret's amazingly small maid of all work, who
was always washing and never washed, Joan saw the query for the
hundredth time, and, as ever, found its answer in the blistered paint
and dust covered windows: Madame Lucette's last song of real life
pointed a moral.
Joan's bright face did not cloud on that account. Paul Verlaine, taking
the air in the Boulevard Saint Michel, had he chanced to notice the dry
husk of that Cabaret Latin, might have composed a chanson on the vanity
of dead cafes; but this sprightly girl had chosen her residence there
chiefly because it marched with her purse. Moreover, it was admirably
suited to the needs of one who for the most part gave her days to the
Louvre and her evenings to the Sorbonne.
She was rather late that morning. Lest that precious hour of white light
should be lost, she sped rapidly across the place, down the boulevard,
and along the busy Quai des Grands Augustins. On the Pont Neuf she
glanced up at another statuesque acquaintance, this time a kingly
personage on horseback. She could never quite dispel the notion that
Henri Quatre was ready to flirt with her. The roguish twinkle in his
bronze eye was very taking, and there were not many men in Paris who
could look at her in that way and win a smile in return. To be sure, it
was no new thing for a Vernon to be well disposed toward Henry of
Navarre; but that is ancient history, and our pretty Joan, blithely
unconscious, was hurrying that morning to take an active part in
redrafting the Berlin treaty.
At the corner of the bridge, where it joins the Quai du Louvre, she met
a young man. Each pretended that the meeting was accidental, though,
after the first glance, the best-natured recording angel ever
commissioned from Paradise would have refused to believe either of them.
"What a piece of luck!" cried the young man. "Are you going to the
Louvre?"
"Yes. And you?" demanded Joan, flushing prettily.
"I am killing time till the afternoon, when I play Number One for the
Wanderers. To-day's match is at Bagatelle."
She laughed. "'Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech
betrayeth thee,'" she quoted.
"I don't quite follow that, Miss Vernon."
"No? Well, I'll explain another time. I must away to my copying."
"Let me come and fix your easel. Really, I have nothing else to do."
"Worse and worse! En route, _alors_! You can watch me at work. That must
be a real pleasure to an idler."
"I am no idler," he protested.
"What? Who spoke but now of 'killing time,' 'play,' 'Number One,' and
'Bagatelle'? Really, Mr. Delgrado!"
"Oh, is that what you are driving at? But you misunderstood. Bagatelle
is near the polo ground in the Bois, and, as Number One in my team, I
shall have to hustle. Four stiff chukkers at polo are downright hard
work, Miss Vernon. By teatime I shall be a limp rag. I promised to play
nearly a month ago, and I cannot draw back now."
"Polo is a man's game, at any rate," she admitted.
"Would you care to see to-day's tie?" he asked eagerly. "We meet
Chantilly, and, if we put them out in the first round of the tournament,
with any ordinary luck we ought to run right into the semi-final."
She shook her head. "You unhappy people who have to plan and scheme how
best to waste your hours have no notion of their value. I must work
steadily from two till five. That means a sixteenth of my picture.
Divide two hundred and fifty by sixteen, and you have--dear me! I am no
good at figures."
"Fifteen francs, sixty-two and a half centimes," said he promptly.
She flashed a surprised look at him. "That is rather clever of you," she
said. "Well, fancy a poor artist sacrificing all that money in order to
watch eight men galloping after a white ball and whacking it and each
other's ponies unmercifully."
"To hit an adversary's pony is the unforgivable sin," he cried, smiling
at her, and she hastily averted her eyes, having discovered an unnerving
similarity between his smile and--Henri Quatre's!
They walked on in eloquent silence. The man was cudgeling his brains for
an excuse whereby he might carry her off in triumph to the Bois. The
girl was fighting down a new sensation that threatened her independence.
Never before had she felt tonguetied in the presence of an admirer. She
had dismissed dozens of them. She refrained now from sending this
good-looking boy packing only because it would be cruel, and Joan Vernon
could not be cruel to anyone. Nevertheless, she had to justify herself
as a free lance, and it is the role of a lance to attack rather than
defend.
"What do you occupy yourself with when you are not playing polo or
lounging about artists' studios?" she asked suddenly.
"Not much, I am afraid. I like shooting and hunting; but these Frenchmen
have no backbone for sport. Will you believe it, one has the greatest
difficulty in getting a good knock at polo unless there is a crowd of
ladies on the lawn?"
"Ah! I begin to see light."
"That is not the reason I asked you to come. If you honored me so
greatly you would be the first woman, my mother excepted, I have ever
driven to the club. To-day's players are mostly Americans or English. Of
course there are some first-rate French teams; but you can take it from
me that they show their real form only before the ladies."
"As in the tourneys of old?"
"Perhaps. It is the same at the chateaux. Everyone wants his best girl
to watch his prowess with the gun."
He stopped, wishing he had left the best girl out of it; but Joan was
kind hearted and did not hesitate an instant.
"So you are what is known as a gentleman of leisure and independent
means?" she said suavely.
"Something of the sort."
"I am sorry for you, Mr. Delgrado."
"I am rather sorry for myself at times," he admitted, and if Joan had
chanced to glance at him she would have seen a somewhat peculiar
expression on his face. "But why do you call me Mr. Delgrado?"
She gazed at him now in blank bewilderment--just a second too late to
see that expression. "Isn't Delgrado your name?" she asked.
"Yes, in a sense. People mostly call me Alec. Correctly speaking, Alec
isn't mother's darling for Alexis; but it goes, anyhow."
"Sometimes I think you are an American," she vowed.
"Half," he said. "My mother is an American, my father a Kosnovian--well,
just a Kosnovian."
"And pray what is that?" she cried.
"Haven't you heard of Kosnovia? It is a little Balkan State."
"Is there some mystery, then, about your name?"
"Oh, no; plain Alec."
"Am I to call you plain Alec?"
"Yes."
"But it follows that you would call me plain Joan."
"Let it go at Joan."
"Very well. Good morning, Alec."
"No, no, Miss Vernon. Don't be vexed. I really did not mean to be rude.
And you promised, you know."
"Promised what?"
"That I might help carry your traps. Please don't send me away!"
He was so contrite that Joan weakened again. "It is rather friendly to
hear one's Christian name occasionally," she declared. "I will compound
on the Alec if you will tell me why the Delgrado applies only in a
sense."
"Done--Joan," said he, greatly daring. He waited the merest fraction of
time; but she gave no sign. "My stipulation is of the slightest," he
added, "that I discourse in the Louvre. Where are you working?"
"In the Grande Galerie; on a subject that I enjoy, too. People have such
odd notions as to nice pictures. They choose them to match the
furniture. Now, this one is quite delightful to copy, and not very
difficult. But you shall see."
They entered the Louvre from the Quai.
Joan was undoubtedly flurried. Here, in very truth, was that
irrepressible Henri descended from his bronze horse and walking by her
side. That his later name happened to be Alec did not matter at all. She
knew that a spiteful Bourbon had melted down no less than two statues of
Napoleon in order to produce the fine cavalier who approved of her every
time she crossed the Pont Neuf, and it seemed as if some of the little
Corsican's dominance was allied with a touch of Bearnais swagger in the
stalwart youth whom she had met for the first time in Rudin's studio
about three weeks earlier.
They were steel and magnet at once. Delgrado had none of the
boulevardier's abounding self-conceit, or Joan would never have given
him a second look, while Joan's frank comradeship was vastly more
alluring than the skilled coquetry that left him cold. Physically, too,
they were well mated, each obviously made for the other by a
discriminating Providence. They were just beginning to discover the
fact, and this alarmed Joan.
She could not shake off the notion that he had waylaid her this morning
for a purpose wholly unconnected with the suggested visit to the polo
ground. So, tall and athletic though he was, she set such a pace up the
steps and through the lower galleries that further intimate talk became
impossible. Atalanta well knew what she was about when she ran her
suitors to death, and Meilanion showed a deep insight into human nature
when he arranged that she should loiter occasionally.
Delgrado, however, had no golden apples to drop in Joan's path, could
not even produce a conversational plum; but he was young enough to
believe in luck, and he hoped that fortune might favor him, once the
painting was in hand.
Each was so absorbed in the other that the Louvre might have been empty.
Certainly, neither of them noticed that a man crossing the Pont du
Carrousel in an open cab seemed to be vastly surprised when he saw them
hastening through the side entrance. He carried his interest to the
point of stopping the cab and following them. Young, clear skinned,
black-haired, exceedingly well dressed, with the eyes and eyelashes of
an Italian tenor, he moved with an air of distinction, and showed that
he was no stranger to the Louvre by his rapid decision that the Salle
des Moulages, with its forbidding plaster casts, was no likely resting
place for Delgrado and his pretty companion.
Making straight for the nearest stairs, he almost blundered upon Alec,
laden with Joan's easel and canvas; but this exquisite, having something
of the spy's skill, whisked into an alcove, scrutinized an old print,
and did not emerge until the chance of being recognized had passed.
After that, he was safe. He appeared to be amused, even somewhat amazed,
when he learned why Delgrado was patronizing the arts. Yet the discovery
was evidently pleasing. He caressed a neat, black mustache with a
well-manicured hand, while taking note of Joan's lithe figure and well
poised head. The long, straight vista of the gallery did not permit of a
near view, and he could not linger in the narrow doorway, used chiefly
by artists and officials, whence he watched them for a minute or more.
So he turned on his heel and descended to the street and his waiting
victoria, waving that delicate hand and smiling with the manner of one
who said, "Fancy that of Alec! The young scamp!"
Joan was copying Caravaggio's "The Fortune Teller," a masterpiece that
speaks in every tongue, to every age. Its keynote is simplicity. A
gallant of Milan, clothed in buff-colored doublet slashed with brown
velvet, a plumed cavalier hat set rakishly on his head, and a lace
ruffle caught up with a string of seed pearls round his neck, is holding
out his right palm to a Gypsy woman, while the fingers of his left hand
rest on a swordhilt. The woman is young and pretty, her subject a mere
boy, and her smug aspect of divination is happily contrasted with the
youth's excitement at hearing what fate has in store.
"There!" cried Joan. "What do you think of it?"
She had almost completed the Gypsy, and there was already a suggestion
of the high lights in the youngster's face and his brightly colored
garb.
"I like your copy more than the original," said Delgrado.
"Your visits to Rudin have not taught you much about art, then," said
she tartly.
"Not even that great master would wish me to be insincere."
"No, indeed; but he demands knowledge at the back of truth. Now, mark
me! You see that speck of white fire in the corner of the woman's eye?
It gives life, intelligence, subtle character. Just a little blob of
paint, put there two hundred years ago, yet it conveys the whole stock
in trade of the fortune teller. Countless numbers of men and women have
gazed at that picture, a multitude that must have covered the whole
range of human virtues and vices; but it has never failed to carry the
same message to every beholder. Do you think that my poor reproduction
will achieve that?"
"You have chosen the only good bit in the painting," he declared
stoutly. "Look at the boy's lips. Caravaggio must have modeled them from
a girl's. What business has a fellow with pouting red lips like them to
wear a sword on his thigh?"
Joan laughed with joyousness that was good to hear.
"Pooh! Run away and smite that ball with a long stick!" she said.
"Hum! More than the Italian could have done."
He was ridiculously in earnest. Joan colored suddenly and busied herself
with tubes of paint. She believed he was jealous of the handsome
Lombard. She began to mix some pigments on the palette. Delgrado,
already regretting an inexplicable outburst, turned from the picture and
looked at Murillo's "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her
feet, and upon her head a diadem of twelve stars."
"Now, please help me to appreciate that and you will find me a willing
student," he murmured.
But Joan had recovered her self-possession. "Suppose we come off the
high art ladder and talk of our uninteresting selves," she said. "What
of the mystery you hinted at on the Quai? Why shouldn't I call you Mr.
Delgrado? One cannot always say 'Alec,' it's too short."
Then he reddened with confusion. "Delgrado is my name, right enough," he
said. "It is the prefix I object to. It implies that I am sailing under
false colors, and I don't like that."
"I am not good at riddles, and I suspect prefix," she cried.
"Ah, well, I suppose I must get through with it. Have you forgotten how
Rudin introduced me?"
She knitted her brows for a moment. Pretty women should cultivate the
trick, unless they fear wrinkles. It gives them the semblance of looking
in on themselves, and the habit is commendable. "Rudin is fond of his
little joke," she announced at last.
"But--what did he say?"
"Oh, there was some absurdity. He addressed me as if I were a royal
personage, and asked to be allowed to present his Serene Highness Prince
Alexis Delgrado."
The man smiled constrainedly. "It sounds rather nonsensical, doesn't
it?" he said.
"Rudin often invents titles. I have heard efforts much more amusing."
"That is when he is original. Unfortunately, in my case, he was merely
accurate."
Joan whirled round on him. "Are you a Prince?" she gasped, each word
marking a crescendo of wonder.
"Yes--Joan."
"But what am I to do? What am I to say? Must I drop on one knee and kiss
your hand?"
"I cannot help it," he growled. "And I was obliged to tell you. You
would have been angry with me if I had kept it hidden from you. Oh, dash
it all, Joan, don't laugh! That is irritating."
"My poor Alec! Why did they make you a Prince?"
"I was born that way. My father is one. Do you mean to say you have
lived in Paris a year and have never seen our names in the newspapers?
My people gad about everywhere. The Prince and Princess Michael
Delgrado, you know."
"I do not know," said Joan deliberately.
Her alert brain was slowly assimilating this truly astonishing
discovery. She did not attempt to shirk its significance, and her first
thought was to frame some excuse to abandon work for the day; since, no
matter what the cost to herself, this friendship must go no farther. The
decision caused a twinge; but she did not flinch, for Joan would always
visit the dentist rather than endure toothache. She could not dismiss a
Serene Highness merely because he declared his identity, nor was she
minded to forget his rank because she had begun to call him Alec. But it
hurt. She was conscious of a longing to be alone. If not in love, she
was near it, and hard-working artists must not love Serene Highnesses.
Delgrado was watching her with a glowering anxiety that itself carried a
warning. "You see, Joan, I had to tell you," he repeated. "People make
such a fuss about these empty honors----"
Joan caught at a straw. She hoped that a display of sarcastic humor
might rescue her. "Honors!" she broke in, and she laughed almost
shrilly, for her voice was naturally sweet and harmonious. "Is it an
honor, then, to be born a Prince?"
"If a man is worth his salt, the fact that he is regarded as a Prince
should make him princely."
"That is well said. Try and live up to it. You will find it a task,
though, to regulate your life by copybook maxims."
"The princedom is worth nothing otherwise. In its way, it is a handicap.
Most young fellows of my age have some sort of career before them, while
I--I really am what you said I was, an idler. I didn't like the taunt
from your lips; but it was true. Well, I am going to change all that. I
am tired of posturing as one of Daudet's 'Kings in Exile.' We expelled
potentates all live in Paris; that is the irony of it. I want to be
candid with you, Joan. I have seen you every day since we met at
Rudin's; but I did not dare to meet you too often lest you should send
me away. You have given me a purpose in life. You have created a sort of
hunger in me, and I refuse to be satisfied any longer with the easygoing
existence of the last few years. No, you must hear me out. No matter
what you say now, the new order of things is irrevocable. I almost
quarreled with my father last night; but I told him plainly that I meant
to make a place for myself in the world. At any rate, I refuse to live
the life he lives, and I am here to-day because the awakening is due to
you, Joan."
A tremor ran through the girl's limbs; but she faced him bravely. Though
her lips quivered, she forced herself to utter words that sounded like a
jibe. "I am to play Pallas Athene to your Perseus," she said, and it
seemed to him for a moment that she was in a mood to jest at heroics.
"If you mean that I regard you as my goddess, I am well content," he
answered quickly.
"Ah, but wait. Pallas Athene came to Perseus in a dream, and let us make
believe that we are dreaming now. She had great gray eyes, clear and
piercing, and she knew all thoughts of men's hearts and the secrets of
their souls. My eyes are not gray, Alec, nor can they pierce as hers;
but I can borrow her beautiful words, and tell you that she turns her
face from the creatures of clay. They may 'fatten at ease like sheep in
the pasture, and eat what they did not sow, like oxen in the stall. They
grow and spread, like the gourd along the ground; but, like the gourd,
they give no shade to the traveler, and when they are ripe death gathers
them, and they go down unloved into hell, and their name vanishes out of
the land.' But to the souls of fire she gives more fire, and to those
who are manful she gives a power more than man's. These are her heroes,
the sons of the Immortals. They are blest, but not as the men who live
at ease. She drives them forth 'by strange paths ... through doubt and
need and danger and battle.... Some of them are slain in the flower of
their youth, no man knows when or where, and some of them win noble
names and a fair and green old age.' Not even the goddess herself can
tell the hap that shall befall them; for each man's lot is known only to
Zeus. Have you reflected well on these things, Alec? Be sure of
yourself! There may be Gorgons to encounter, and monsters of the deep."
He came very near to her. Her eyes were glistening. For one glowing
second they looked into each other's hearts.
"And perhaps a maiden chained to a rock to be rescued," he whispered.
Then she drew herself up proudly. "Do not forget that I am Pallas
Athene," she said. "My shield of brass is an easel and my mighty spear a
mahl-stick; but--I keep to my role, Alec."
He longed to clasp her in his arms; but it flashed upon him with an
inspiration from topmost Olympus that, all unwittingly, she had bound
herself to his fortunes.
"Then I leave it at that," he said quietly.
This sudden air of confidence was bewildering. She had been swept off
her feet by emotion, and the very considerations she thought she had
conquered were now tugging at her heart-strings. He must not go away as
her knight errant, eager and ready to slay dragons for her sake.
"Do not misunderstand me," she faltered. "I was only quoting a passage
from one of Kingsley's Greek fairy tales that has always had a peculiar
fascination for me."
"I'll get that story and read it. But I am interfering with your work,
and here comes your friend, the Humming Bee. If he said anything funny
to me just now, I should want to strangle him. So good-by, dear Joan. I
will turn up again to-morrow and tell you how I fared in each round."
And he was gone, leaving her breathless and shaken; for well she knew
that he held her pledged to unspoken vows, that his eager confidences
would apply alike to the day's sport and his future life. With hands
that trembled she essayed a further mixing of colors; but she scarcely
realized what she was doing, until a queer, cracked voice that yet was
musical sang softly in German at her elbow:
If the Song should chance to wander
Forth the Minstrel too must go.
It was passing strange that crooked little Felix Poluski, ex-Nihilist,
the wildest firebrand ever driven out of Warsaw, and the only living
artist who could put on canvas the gleam of heaven that lights the
Virgin's face in the "Immaculate Conception," should justify his
nickname of Le Bourdon by humming those two lines.
"I hope you are not a prophet, Felix," said Joan with a catch in her
throat.
"No, _ma belle_, no prophet, merely an avenger, a slayer of Kings. I see
you have just routed one."
She turned and looked into the deepset eyes of the old hunchback, and
for the first time noted that they were gray and very bright and
piercing. At the same time the fancy crossed her mind that perhaps Henri
Quatre had had blue eyes, bold yet tender, like unto Alec's.
"So you too are aware that Monsieur Delgrado is a Prince?" she said,
letting her thought bubble forth at random.
"Some folk call him that, and it is the worst thing I know of him so
far. It may spoil him in time; but at present I find him a nice young
man."
Joan swung round to her picture. "If Alec had the chance of becoming a
King, he would be a very good one," she said loyally.
Poluski's wizened cheeks puckered into a grin. He glanced at the easel
and thence to the picture on the wall.
"Perfectly, my dear Joan," he said. "And, by the bones of Kosciusko, you
have chosen a proper subject, The Fortune Teller! Were you filling our
warrior with dreams of empire? Well, well, I don't know which is more
potent with monarchs, woman or dynamite. In Alec's case I fancy I should
bet on the woman. Here, for example, is one that shook Heaven, and I
have always thought that Eve was not given fair treatment, or she would
surely have twisted the serpent's tail," and, humming the refrain of
"Les Demi-Vierges," he climbed the small platform he had erected in
front of the world famous Murillo.
Back to back, separated by little more than half the width of the
gallery, Joan and Poluski worked steadily for twenty minutes. The Pole
sang to himself incessantly, now bassooning between his thin lips the
motif of some rhapsody of Lizst's, now murmuring the words of some
catchy refrain from the latest review. Anybody else who so transgressed
the rules would have been summarily turned out by the guards; but the
men knew him, and the Grande Galerie, despite its treasures, or perhaps
because of them, is the least popular part of the Louvre. Artists haunt
it; but the Parisian, the provincial, the globe trotter, gape once in
their lives at Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Salvator Rosa, Murillo of
course, and the rest of the mighty dead, and then ask with a yawn,
"Where are the Crown Jewels?"
So the Humming Bee annoyed none by his humming; but he stopped short in
an improvised variation on the theme of Vulcan's song in "Philemon and
Baucis" when he heard a subdued but none the less poignant cry of
distress from Joan. In order to turn his head he was compelled to twist
his ungainly body, and Joan, who was standing well away from her canvas,
was aware of the movement. She too turned.
"I am going," she announced. "I cannot do anything right to-day. Just
look at that white feather!"
"Where?"
"In the boy's hat, you tease! Where else would you look?"
"In your face, _belle mignonne_," said the Pole.
It was true. Joan was not ill; but she was undeniably low spirited, and
the artist's mood has a way of expressing itself on the palette. She
laughed, with a certain sense of effort.
"I like you best when you sing, Felix. Sometimes, when you speak, you
are Infelix."
"By all means go home," he grinned. "One cannot both joke and copy a
Caravaggio."
He began to paint with feverish industry, did not look at her again, but
tossed an adieu over his humped shoulder when she hurried away. Then he
gazed reproachfully, almost vindictively, at the uplifted eyes of the
transfigured Virgin.
"Now, you!" he growled. "Vous etes benie entre toutes les femmes! This
affair is in your line. Why don't you help? _Saperlotte!_ The girl is
worth it."