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 Floss, for her part, was more than satisfied with Peñaverde.

Grover was silent. He did not remember having seen any examples of the man's work, though the name still echoed in his brain with an unaccountable familiarity.

When they arrived at Peñaverde's studio in a fashionable street not far from the Etoile, the painter was dazzlingly pleasant. He answered the knock himself, and in his stained smock, with his black eyes and white teeth, he was menacingly pictorial. All the more so for a background of deep rich reds and purples and bronzes, pale blues and greens picked out by the strong white sunlight which streamed in through the glass wall. To Grover he seemed pleased to see Floss per se, but excessively happy to see her per Olga. Nothing definite in his attitude warranted this conclusion, but Grover was sure of it, even when he had made a fair discount on the score of his own hypersensitiveness to everything that concerned Olga. He watched her anxiously for some sign of the resentment she had professed, and was glad to note that she met each of the painter's attentions with an ironic counter. But then, desolating thought, hadn't she treated him, Grover Thanet, ever since their first encounter in Noémi Janvier's flat, either with indifference or with faint irony!

"How did you chance to wear a lettuce-colored coat today, Mademoiselle?" Don Armando asked, "when