His first thought was that she would have been lovely if she hadn't been so thin. Then he saw how shabby she was, and how neat. Nothing could have been more charming than her chestnut hair, or her blue eyes that had a look of innocence, or her fair and transparent complexion, though one could have wished she were rosier. She did not look around with the quick, alert, bright glance of the Parisienne whom everything interests and amuses; she had the abstracted and sad air of a child who suffers, and whom suffering bewilders.
Stocks said, in a low voice, tinged with pity:
"L'amie de Dangeau."
Peter received that announcement with a shock of surprise and distaste. Dangeau was such an utter brute! Handsome in his way, without conscience or pity, Dangeau would have eaten his mother's heart to satisfy his own hunger, or wiped his feet upon his father's beard. The gifted, intellectual, and rapacious savage seized whatever came near him that pleased his fancy or aroused his curiosity, extracted the pith, and tossed aside what no longer amused or served him. There was no generosity in him, only an insatiable and ferocious demand that life should give him more, always more! Peter, who both admired and detested him, was sorry for this gentle creature fallen into his remorseless claws. And he wondered, as decent men must, at the fatal fascination animals like Dangeau seem to possess for women.
He saw her occasionally after that, always alone. Plainly, things were not well with her. Her pale face grew paler and thinner; her dress shabbier. The look of bewilderment was now a look of pain. Her eyes were heavy, as if they wept too much. Peter watched her with a troubled heart. One day Henri, the garçon, murmured confidentially, as she left the café after a particularly slim meal:
"These thin little blondes, they do not last long. That one was like a rose when I first saw her. Pauvre enfant!" And he looked after her with a compassionate glance.
"She seems—different," said Peter. "It is not well with her?"
"Alas, no! She is from the provinces, Monsieur, come to Paris to earn more. And so she wearied her ami. You know him, Monsieur; he is a restless man, quickly tiring—that sculptor! Also, he feared she would fall sick upon his hands—you see how frail she is, and he abhors all that is not robust." And Henri made an expressive gesture. He added: "She is of the sort that love, Monsieur; and, you understand, that is fatal!"
"And how does she manage now?" asked Peter.
Henri shrugged significantly. Peter drummed on the table and scowled. A little girl, from the provinces! One understood now how she had fallen into Dangeau's hands, and how, inevitably, he had tired, and tossed her aside like a wilted flower. And now she was facing slow starvation—Oh, damn!