René’s face darkened for a moment, but the retort died on his lips.
“Look here, old man,” he urged. “Don’t be a beast. I’m serious.”
“Tant pis,” was François’ implacable reply.
But when next day Anne was actually in his studio, and he heard her voice, and saw her smile, and listened to the laughing clamour around her, as she sat in the only armchair that was not broken, and drank execrable tea out of a cup which did not match its saucer, it was difficult even for Fontenelle to be anything but gay and pleased.
With an odd mixture of sensations, he noticed how fair her skin looked against her black dress. The fur she wore on her shoulders was also exceedingly becoming. François, who as a painter of many women’s portraits knew something of the cost of feminine apparel, looked at it with a certain surprise. Either the old lady had been fairly generous, or Anne in her one day’s shopping, had been disgracefully extravagant. In either case the result was admirable. He emerged from his reflections to find a furious discussion raging as to which restaurant she should be taken to dine.
“Café de la Régence,” said François authoritatively, “and afterwards we’ll drive back to the Lilas.”
It was several days before Anne found herself alone with René.
He came to her hotel one morning, and carried her off to lunch with him at a little restaurant in the neighbourhood of his studio.
“You have such a devoted body-guard, that I never get a word with you,” he complained. “And I want you to see my pictures. We must get in before the light goes. It gets so confoundedly dark in the afternoons now.”