(Tuesday, September 11; 10.30 a. m.)
Markham and Heath and Vance and I were now alone in the apartment. Dark, low-hanging clouds had drifted across the sun, and the gray spectral light intensified the tragic atmosphere of the rooms. Markham had lighted a cigar, and stood leaning against the piano, looking about him with a disconsolate but determined air. Vance had moved over to one of the pictures on the side wall of the living-room—Boucher's "La Bergère Endormie" I think it was—and stood looking at it with cynical contempt.
"Dimpled nudities, gambolling Cupids and woolly clouds for royal cocottes," he commented. His distaste for all the painting of the French decadence under Louis XV was profound. "One wonders what pictures courtesans hung in their boudoirs before the invention of these amorous eclogues, with their blue verdure and beribboned sheep."
"I'm more interested at present in what took place in this particular boudoir last night," retorted Markham impatiently.
"There's not much doubt about that, sir," said Heath encouragingly. "And I've an idea that when
