The last of the afterglow had all but faded from the sky, and only the faintest twilight, a rose-pink twilight, came into the studio. Rose-pink: he thought of that at once and thought, too, that these sky-roses had a sweeter scent than the roses of earth, for there was about this once-familiar place an odor more delicate and tender than any he had ever known before. It was dim, illusive; it was like a musical poem in an unknown tongue, and yet, unlike French scents and hot-house flowers, it subtly suggested open spaces and mountain-peaks. Cartaret had a quick vision of sunlight upon snow-crests. He wondered how such a perfume could find its way through the narrow, dirty streets of the Latin Quarter and into his poor room.
And then, in the dim light, he saw a figure standing there.
Cartaret stopped short.
An hour ago he had left the place empty. Now, when he so wanted solitude, it had been invaded. There was an intruder. It was—— yes, the Lord have mercy on him, it was a girl!
“Who’s there?” demanded Cartaret.
He was so startled that he asked the question in English and with his native American accent. The next moment, he was more startled when the strange girl answered him in English, though an English oddly precise.
“It is I,” she said.
“It is I,” was what she said first, and, as she said it, Cartaret noted that her voice was a wonderfully soft contralto. What she next said was uttered as he further discovered himself to her by an involuntary movement that brought him within the rear window’s shaft of afterglow. It was:
“What are you doing here?”
She spoke with patent amazement, and there were, between the words, four perceptible pauses.