As the train moved off she saw him standing on the platform, licking his lips and surrounded by a swarm of flies.
CHAPTER TWO
THE MAN ON WHOM FLIES SETTLED
TWO o’clock in the morning at the Gare du Montparnasse. The girl was dazed and weary. She sat on her bundle in the stale greyness of the station, waiting anxiously for the dawn. About six o’clock she ventured forth, and holding her precious envelope in her hand inquired her way at the corner of every street.
A morning of exquisite metal, vivid, spacious, resplendent. As she crossed the Seine by the Pont Royal, the sky was golden and against it gloomed the twin towers of Notre Dame. The palaces of the Louvre swam in lovely light and the Gardens of the Tuileries seemed washed in yellow wine. Up the long rise of the Champs-Elysées, the Arc de Triomphe was superbly radiant, its turquoise heart stillettoed by the glittering lunge of the Luxor Column.
The girl gazed with awestruck eyes. As she thought of the sunrise in the forest the violence of the change dulled her brain. The city amazed and appalled her; but, impelled by fear, she came at length to the heights of Montmartre. There before a gloomy house in the Rue Lepic she paused, her heart beating thickly.
She knocked at the heavy oak-door, timidly at first, then loudly. She had a sudden fear that there might be no one there. As she was wondering what she should do she heard slow, shuffling footsteps, and a withdrawal of bolts, then the door opened a little. An old woman regarded her angrily. She was bent almost double, and held her head sideways. Her face was hard and sour. She snarled:
“What are you making all this row for? Couldn’t you have the patience to wait till I got down?”
The girl presented her letter. The old woman regarded it suspiciously.
“Who gave you this?”
“The old man who paints in the forest.”