Page:Rowland--The closing net.djvu/261

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SANCTUARY
241

ple we met seemed to be of a very decent class. We went to the top; then——

"Here we are," said Rosalie, and whipped out a key and opened the door. "Where are you, mother?" she called.

"I am here, deary!" came a cheerful voice from down the corridor. Rosalie turned to me.

"I will go and tell her. I won't be a minute. Go right in, Mr. ——" She paused, smiling.

"Clamart," I answered "Frank Clamart."

"Thanks. I won't be long." She gave me a nod and hurried off.

The room where she asked me to wait was a small studio, high-ceilinged, with a skylight and a long window that looked out on some fruit gardens. It is amazing the amount of cultivated ground there is behind the houses in all parts of Paris! Some of the sections between streets hold young farms.

These gardens belonged to some old mansion of the nobility, and the family had probably grown their fruit and vegetables there for several hundred years.

Rosalie's was one of those little, old-fashioned studio apartments of which there are so many in that quarter. There was nothing of bourgeois about it, for the few pieces of furniture were old and massive and pure-style, and were the sort you might expect to find in the residence of a prelate. There were some big, richly-framed pictures, which appeared to be old and valuable copies of some of the old masters—among them Murillo's "Virgin of the Conception," after the one in the Louvre; Tintoretto's "Crucifixion," and a small but very beauti-