“He starves! The concierge who has watched him says he does not buy food enough to keep body and soul together. But how is one to offer him anything? It is easy to see that he would not take it.”
There was a moment of silence, in which he went on painting.
“The trouble is,” he said at last, “that a man would not know how to approach him. It is only women who can do these things.”
Until the sitting was over neither the one nor the other spoke again. When it was over and Natalie was on the point of leaving the room, Masson looked at her critically.
“You are pale,” he remarked. “You are like a ghost.”
“Is it not becoming?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why complain?”
She went to her own room and spent half an hour in collecting every valuable she owned. They were not many; she had always been recklessly improvident. She put together in a package her few jewels, and even the laces she considered worth the most. Then she went out, and, taking a fiacre at the nearest corner, drove away.
She was absent two hours, and when she returned she stopped at the entrance, intending to ask the concierge a question. But the man himself spoke first. He was evidently greatly disturbed and not a little alarmed.