"It is so like my son," she said, observing my regard. "Monsieur has not had it long?"
"No, a few days only."
"My poor son was killed," she continued, wiping her eyes: "he was a mason and fell from a scaffolding. If he had only been contented to be a street-paver, as I begged him, he would never have fallen."
"Blessed are the lowly-minded, for being already down they cannot fall!" This voiceless remark I made to my other self as a warning.
"It is such a broken-up portrait that monsieur cannot want it. I would like to buy it for a little sum if monsieur would sell it. My poor son! That hole in the forehead especially looks like Jean when I saw him last." Here she covered her eyes.
"How much did that one-eyed man give you to come and buy that portrait?" asked I, guessing that this was an envoy of Sticks.
"He?" she said, confused: "it was no he." Then recovering herself: "Monsieur is mistaken if he thinks I would take a bribe;" after which the lady withdrew.
"Was not my question well thought of?" asked I of my other self in triumph.
"I think you are becoming a monomaniac," was his complimentary reply.
The day passed uneventfully, although I still had a suspicion that I was watched, but I had no means of making it a certainty. When I returned home my first look was toward the portrait. It was still safe.