Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/264

 but the ripe full breasts of the girl in the picture were in the old woman sunken and withered, the color of dusty paper; the gentle soft curve of the throat was shrunken and flabby, and the soft glow of the face and the fresh carmine of the caressing, sensuous lips were grotesquely simulated with hard rouge, and powder which had caked in little channels on the wrinkled face of the old woman. Even the bit of hair which showed beneath the big hat was travestied horribly by dye. Madame Blaise simpered weakly in imitation of the mysterious, youthful smile which curved the lips of the girl in the picture.

There could be no mistake. The features were there, the same modeling, the same indefinable spirit. Madame Blaise was the Byzantine Empress and the Girl in the Hat. The caricature was cruel, relentless, bitter beyond the power of imagination. Lily's eyes widened with the horror of one who has seen an unspeakable ghost. She trembled and the Girl in the Hat slipped from her knee and fell with a clatter face downward upon the Byzantine Empress.

Madame Blaise had begun to walk up and down the room with the languid air of a mannequin. The big hat flopped as she moved. Turning her head coyly, she said, "I have not changed. You see, I am almost the same."

And then she fell to talking rapidly to herself, holding unearthly conversations with men and women who stood in the dark corners of the room among the innumerable pictures and bits of decaying bric-a-brac. Crossing the room she passed near Lily's chair where, halting for a second, she bent down until her painted cheek touched Lily's soft hair. "You see," she cried, pointing toward the dusty closet, "that one over there. . . . He would give his life to have me." She laughed a crazy laugh. "But no . . . not I. Never yield too easily and yield only for love. Live only for love." And she moved off again on her mad promenade, gibbering, bowing and smiling into the dusty corners.

In the midst of a tête-à-tête which the old woman held with an invisible beau whom she addressed as "Your Highness," Lily sprang up and ran toward the door. Opening it, she rushed through the upper hall down the stairway into the dark tunnel below. As the outer door slammed behind her, it shut