"I don't know! Some chap who used to frequent the place in his unknown days. We can ask Fruvier."
"It is clever."
"It is."
"It has imagination."
They both looked at the picture—a study in black and white, showing an attic room, with a pierrette seated disconsolate upon a bed, a pierrot gazing through a window.
"Pierrot seeking the moon, eh?"
Max nodded.
"Yes. It has imagination—and also technique!"
But their criticism was interrupted; a piano was opened at the farther end of the room by an individual affecting the unkempt hair and velveteen coat of past Bohemianism, who seated himself and ran his fingers over the keys as though he alone occupied the room.
At this very informal signal, the curtain rose upon a ridiculously small stage, and an insignificant, nervous-looking man stepped toward the footlights at the same moment that M. Fruvier and his followers entered and seated themselves in a row, their backs to the wall.