"It is a double room I must give you, vacated, as you heard, but this very morning. They were going to stay longer, Monsieur and Madame Guillaumet, but of a sudden she changed her mind. Oh, she was of a temper!" Potin raises expressive eyes heavenwards. "It is ever so when May weds with December."
"He was much older than his wife, then?" queries the artist, politely feigning an interest he is far from feeling.
"Mais non, parbleu! It was she who was the older—by some fifteen years; and not a beauty. But rich—he knew what he was about, giving his smooth cheek for her smooth louis!"
Left alone, Lou Arnaud proceeds to unpack his knapsack; he lingers over it as long as possible; the task awaiting him below is no pleasant one. Finally he descends. The small smoky salle à manger is full of people. There is much talk and laughter going on; the clatter of knives and forks. At the desk near the door, a young girl is busy with the accounts. Her very pale gold hair, parted and drawn loosely back over the ears, casts a faint shadow on her pure, white skin. Arnaud, as he chooses a seat, looks at her critically.
"Bah, she is insignificant!" he thinks. "What can have possessed Claude?"
Suddenly she raises her eyes. They meet his in a long, steady gaze. Then once again the lids are lowered.
The artist sets down his glass with a hand that shakes. He is not imaginative, as a rule, but when one sees the soul of a mocking devil look out, dark and compelling, from the face of a Madonna, one is disconcerted.
He wonders no more what had possessed Claude. On his way to the door a few moments later, he pauses at her desk.
"Monsieur wishes to order breakfast for to-morrow morning?"
"Monsieur wishes to speak with you."