“Ah, I’ll make a beauty of you yet,” said Madame Mangepain at the end of the second week. “Monsieur Frossard won’t know you when he comes back.”
And indeed the girl was amazed at the change in herself. Her skin had become smooth and velvety, her limbs round and firm. Her face, too, had changed. It had retained its quality of childishness, but had lost its cowed and shrinking look. Hints of sweetness and charm revealed themselves. If only she could get away, find decent work, escape from the sinister old man into whose clutches she had fallen. Every day the dread of his return grew upon her.
Then one night Monsieur Frossard came back.
When she brought Margot her coffee next morning Madame Mangepain said to her:
“Get up and make yourself as beautiful as you can. Monsieur Frossard wants to see you in the studio. Be sure you are a credit to me.”
The old woman went so far as to superintend her toilette, putting a faint flush of rouge high on her cheeks, and brushing her hair like spun gold down over the mauve kimono. But nothing could mask the wretchedness in the depths of the girl’s eyes.
As she stood in the doorway of the studio Monsieur Frossard turned ponderously.
“Entrez, voyons. Don’t stand there like a Christian martyr going to the stake. Come here.”
With eyes cast down she obeyed. He pulled up the sleeve of her kimono and looked at her arm with a critical, dispassionate gaze.
“Ah, bon. Now do up your hair in the glass and bare your shoulders. I’m going to do a bust of you to-day.”