“The man in black with the mustache?” Dick 47 asked. “He’s an artist, pretty well known. That impressionistic chap—I can’t think of his name—that had that exhibition at the Palsifer galleries.”
“Does he sell?” Caroline asked.
“No, they say he’s awfully poor, refuses to paint down to the public taste. What the deuce is his name—oh! I know, Collier Pratt—do you know him, Nancy? Lived in Paris always till the war. He’ll appreciate Ritz cooking at Riggs’ prices if anybody will.”
Nancy looked fixedly at the small side-table where the stranger had just placed himself as if he were etched upon the whiteness of the wall behind him. He sat erect and brooding,—his dark, rather melancholy eyes staring straight ahead, and a slight frown wrinkling his really fine forehead. He wore an Inverness cape slung over one shoulder.
“Looks like one of Rembrandt’s portraits of himself,” Caroline suggested.
“He looks like a brigand,” Betty said. “Nancy’s struck dumb with the privilege of adding fuel to a flame of genius like that. Wake up and eat your peach Melba, Nancy.”
Nancy started, and took perfunctorily the spoon that Molly was holding out to her, which she forgot to lift to her lips even after it was freighted with its first delicious mouthful.
“I dreamed about that man,” she said.