The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

The man was passionately, madly in love with her; and so was Jean—which went without saying! Imagine! The two lions of social Paris! Nothing, not an affair, was complete without them—and she had only to lift a finger as to two slaves! Therefore social Paris was utterly and completely under her domination. She, literally, was Paris. It was very plain! So long as she exercised a proprietorship over both of them, Paris was at her feet. It was not a question of choice between them—not at all. Jean was the lion, so much so that she could even hold court with Jean alone; but with both, her position was impregnable. The trouble was—her brows puckered into anxious little furrows—that at the first opportunity Paul would renew the attack. It was very nice to have Paris at one's feet, but it was quite another matter to keep it there. Paul, of course, was the more difficult of the two to keep in hand. Jean, because he had never seemed to shake off entirely that diffidence toward her born of Bernay-sur-Mer, she had so far been able to manage quite simply, only—her eyes shifted from the chauffeur's back to the toe of her shoe, and her foot ceased its petulant tapping on the floor—that was the other incident of last night.

It had happened just after the arrival of the President. Jean had sought her out. She remembered the heightened colour in his cheeks, the sort of nervous brilliance in his eyes. He had been drunk—drunk with the wealth, the glamour, the power that was his; intoxicated with the fame, the adulation, the triumph of the moment. He was a glutton for that—for fame. There was very little else that mattered to Jean. He was the supreme type of egoist. She could dissect Jean very coolly and with precision, she thought.

"The studio, to-morrow afternoon at five, Myrna—don't fail," he had said—and had passed on.

There had been a certain air of authority in his tones—to which she had promptly taken exception, and to which, in an annoying and persistent way, she still took exception. Furthermore, it conveyed a possible, and alarming hint that his docility perhaps was wearing thin. Well, that would never do at all! She was going, of course, to the studio now—-but she would take care of Jean! Five o'clock, he had said. She would be a little late—as she intended to be. At half past five she had asked Paul Valmain and a choice circle of the younger set to drop in at 26 Rue Vanitaire, as a graceful little courtesy, so to speak, to congratulate Jean on his triumph of the night before! The grey eyes held a smile in which mockery and merriment were mingled. One's defences should always be in order!

The small shoe began to tap on the floor of the car again. What a short time—what a long time those two years had been since sleepy, anæsthetised Bernay-sur-Mer! Jean had attracted her then because he had been a "new" sensation—and he had attracted her ever since because he continued to be "the" sensation. But attraction and love were quite different, were they not? Success after success, triumph after triumph had been his. It had been astounding, stupefying, magnificent! At first it had been the inner circle of devotees of art, such as those who had gone to Bernay-sur-Mer, who had hailed him; then, in furious and bewildering sequence, Paris, then France, then Europe—and, equally, so her letters told her, he was the rage in America. None made comparisons—there were no comparisons to make. The man towered, stood alone, without rival, as the greatest sculptor of the age. And, in a sense, he had not begun. Men like old Bidelot and her father said that, stupendous as it already was, his genius had not yet attained its full development; that, marvellous as was the power, force and realism of his conceptions, the exquisite beauty of his execution, there still remained an intangible something yet to be achieved.

Myrna shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Ah, just that tout petit chose!" old Bidelot called it. "So fleeting, so evanescent, so—so—" and he would wave his arms like a grand opera conductor. "Soul," her father called it, in his turn. "The boy hasn't lived enough yet. He'll get it, and then—well, there's only one word to describe it—immortal!"

Myrna made a wry grimace. What was the use of all that? What did they want? And what rubbish! A man whose work was incomparable, that all the world was going crazy over! And what, after all, did old Bidelot and her father know about it, anyway? Old Bidelot, for example, couldn't make a piece of clay resemble a doughnut, except for the hole, if he tried for a thousand years. And as for her father—Myrna choked a laugh.

She glanced at her watch again—and then, quickly, out of the window. It was ten minutes past five, and the car was slowing up in front of the studio. In twenty minutes the others would be here—she had told them to be prompt. Some day, it was very possible, she might marry Jean—but not yet. She was far too well contented with her life as it was! She had managed Jean and his tentative outbursts—for his docility, as she dubbed it, had not been mere tameness—with perfect success for two years; and now, if, as she was somewhat inclined to surmise, his actions of last evening presaged another, she was quite capable of managing that—for twenty minutes.

She alighted from the car, and, instructing her chauffeur that he need not wait, ran up the steps of the sort of stoop that was over the concierge's door and apartment beneath. Hector's red head and doll's-blue eyes, for once, a little to her surprise, were not in evidence on the arrival of a car. The front door, however, was not locked. She pushed it open, entered the hallway, crossed to the door of the salon, and knocked. There was no answer. There was, however, nothing strange about that—Jean, probably, was in the studio proper, the atelier beyond. Well, she would surprise him!