Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/53

and the Spanish screen. When he finally determined that the girl was nowhere about, a flush spread over his round face, and he began to pace angrily back and forth over the red-carpeted floor. His mild features, beginning to show traces of wrinkles, appeared thoughtful, with a touch of concern. He listened carefully, abstractedly, noticing the marks his footsteps made on the carpet, as though his whole life depended on it, making an effort to set his foot-steps in the marks he had already made. He counted his paces. Three, four, five steps around the small table.

But the forced interest in his own steps soon bored him. He thrust his thumbs into his armpits, pushed his rounded belly aggressively forward, and began to gaze contemplatively at the picture of the nude on the wall above the divan. It was a reclining nude, like Goya's Duchess, stripped to the vulgarity of naked, shameless flesh, waiting for love.

"Quelle beauté!" he murmured. He removed his glasses and raised a pair of pince-nez to his eyes. Then he brought his face closer to the picture and read the signature. "Henri."

"Who can that Henri be?" he wondered. He felt a strong curiosity to know whether the dauber had had a living model in front of him when he'd painted the picture, or whether he had concocted the whole thing out of his own lewd mind. "Hell! What a profession!" Again he paced about the small table, and again halted in front of the painting.

Suddenly a shudder went through his veins, he flung himself back as though touched by a live electric wire. He took off the pince-nez, and then put them on again. The same hair! The same eyes! Even the same full, pouting lips and that bewitching dimple low on the fullness of the back. Yes, it was Monique! Unmistakably!

"Holy Mary," Lepetit turned pale. True, the nude in the painting seemed fuller, more corpulent-but surely the