“Why did you make it so beautiful? How can I destroy it?” Jeanne wailed at sight of it.
Well might some sprite have echoed, “How can she?”
The picture was to meet a stranger fate than that, and to serve an unusual purpose as well.
CHAPTER XII
JEANNE’S FORTUNE
Next morning it was arranged that Jeanne should go unaccompanied to the fortune teller on Clark Street. Florence would be loitering on the street, not too far away.
Jeanne, as she started forth on this exciting little journey, cut a real figure. She had put on her finest silk dress. White gloves that reached to her elbows were on her hands. Her hat was from one of the best Michigan Avenue shops. And, to make sure that she would be taken for a “little daughter of the rich,” she had borrowed the famous artist’s very best fur coat.
“Ah!” she breathed, “it is wonderful to be quite rich!”
The place on Clark Street surprised her a little. A plain dwelling with ancient brownstone front, it suggested nothing of the mysterious or supernatural. Inside it was no better. A sign read, “Knock on the door.” The door in question was a glass door that had been painted a solid brown.
Jeanne knocked timidly. The door opened a crack, and a feminine voice said, “Y-e-s?”
The eyes that shone out from the narrow opening registered surprise. Such a gorgeous apparition as Jeanne presented in the borrowed coat, apparently had seldom crossed that threshold.