CHAPTER III
TOC, toc, toc.
And at the same time a small drawn otter skin bonnet appeared in the slight opening of the door, followed by two smiling eyes under a veil, then a long fur cape which outlined the slender body of a young woman.
"I am not disturbing you? . . . May I come in?"
Lirat, the painter, raised his head.
"Ah! it's you, Madame!" he said in a curt tone, almost irritated, while shaking his hands soiled with pastel. "Why, yes, certainly. . . . Come right in!"
He left his easel and offered a seat.
"How is Charles?" he asked.
"He is all right, thank you."
She sat down, smiling, and her smile was really charming as well as sad. Although covered with a veil, her clear eyes of pinkish blue, her very large eyes which illuminated her whole figure, seemed to be radiating infinite kindness. . . . She was dressed very elegantly, without striving to be pretentious. A little over-perfumed, however. . . . There was a moment of silence.
The studio of the painter Lirat, situated in a peaceful section of the Faubourg Saint Honore, on Rodrigues Square, was a vast, bare place with grey walls, with rough carpentry work and without furniture. Lirat called it familiarly "his hangar." A hangar it was, indeed, where the north winds blew and the rain entered the room through the small crevices in the roof. Two long tables of plain wood supported boxes of paint, scrap books, blocks, handles of fans, Jap-
