LAURENT PAINTS PALMER'S PORTRAIT.
Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features.
Monsieur Palmer arrived, and Laurent, agitated and preoccupied as he was, must needs begin his portrait. He had made up his mind to question him with consummate art, and to extort all Thérèse's secrets from him. He could devise no way of broaching the subject, and as the American posed conscientiously, as motionless and dumb as a statue, hardly a word was spoken on either side during the sitting.
Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features. His beauty was without a blemish, a fact that imparted to his face at first sight the inanimate air peculiar to absolutely regular faces. But, on examining him more closely, you could detect a certain shrewdness in his smile and fire in his glance. At the same time that Laurent made these observations, he was trying to determine his model's age.
"I beg your pardon," he said abruptly, "but it would be well for me to know whether you are a young man somewhat overworked, or a middle-aged man wonderfully well preserved. It is of no use for me to look at you, I do not understand what I see."
"I am forty years old," replied Monsieur Palmer simply.
"God save us!" exclaimed Laurent; "then you must enjoy robust health?"
"Excellent!" said Palmer.
And he resumed his graceful pose and his tranquil smile.
"It's the face of a happy lover," said the artist to himself, "or else of a man who has never cared for anything but roast beef."