She looked at him thoughtfully. Her head was bare, and the night breeze from the sea whipped a strand of grey hair across her brow. She brushed it away a little wearily.
"Unless there's anything more I can do for you," suggested the young man smoothly.
Anything more he could do for her! She smiled, considering him. The events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided, governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member of Parliament, author of "The Saharan Solitudes," and woman of the world, saw that she had served her purpose, her work was done.
"Thank you," she said; "there is nothing more. You had better go to bed at once."
There was a broken fountain in the middle of the square, overgrown with sickly lichen, and round it ran a stone bench. The acacias sheltered it, and a dribble of water from the conduit sounded always, fitting itself to one's thoughts in a murmuring cadence. Here Miss Gregory disposed herself, and here the dawn found her, a little disheveled, and looking rather old with the chill of that bleak hour before the sun rises. But her grey head was erect, her broad back straight, and the regard of her eyes serene and untroubled always. She was waiting for the hour when the Consul would be accessible; he was the son of her dearest friend.
"And I must not forget," she told herself—"I really must not forget to attend to that hotel man."
VII
THE MASTER
Papa Musard, whenever he felt that he was about to die, which happened three times a year at least, would beckon as with a finger from the grimy Montmartre tenement in which he abode and call Rufin to come and bid him farewell. The great artist always came; he never failed to show himself humble to humble people, and, besides, Papa Musard had known Corot—or said that he had—and in his capacity of a model had impressed his giant shoulders and its beard on the work of three generations of painters.
The boy who carried the summons sat confidently on the kerb outside the restaurant at which Rufin was used to lunch, and rose to his feet as the tall, cloaked figure turned the corner of the street and approached along the sunlit pavement.