Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/19

 Do you light the fire and set the chocolate pot to boiling."

"B'en, Mam'selle," the servant answered, and preceded Mordecai into the tiny drawing-room, where she knelt before the logs piled ready in the fireplace, set the tinder glowing and blew upon the kindling till the little orange flames curled upward cheerily. With a taper she set candles flickering in wall sconces and on the table, then with the merest intimation of a curtsy left him to his own devices.

The smoke steamed from his garments as he stood before the blaze, turning slowly round and round to dry himself on all sides, and as he felt the cheerful glow draw out the wetness from his clothes he took stock of the room. It was not large, but it was very elegant. The floor was spread with Bruxelles carpet, light-taupe in shade; the walls were pale cream, set with cameo-like plaques of delft-blue with white figures imposed on them. At the windows hung long drapes of gold and chamois-colored velvet. The mantelpiece was white marble, the little clock upon it ormolu. There was a sofa in Etruscan style, mahogany inlaid with bronze, chairs in Roman design. A gilded harpsichord stood near the center of the room. Books, too: Homer's Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the plays of Aristophanes and the witty comedies of Beaumarchais, all bound in carved and gilded leather.

"Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur—Citizen—I hope I have not kept you waiting overlong," he heard her voice from the doorway. He had formed no estimate of her in soaking bonnet and rain-bedraggled dress; now, as she stood framed in the door, her skin aglow with vigorous toweling, he took a half-step forward and involuntarily drew in his breath. Unlike most French women he had seen, she was fair, with very fine and silky hair the color of a frosted chestnut-burr. She wore it rather long, parted in the middle and draped in little curls each side her face, piled in a small Psyche-knot at back, and he knew her ringlets owed no debt to crimping-irons. Ten minutes earlier they had been wet as if dipped in the Seine, and there had been no time to curl them. Her little face was as arresting as an interrogation point, triangular, with high cheek-bones and generous mouth and eyes a pale and smoky gray. Unusual eyes he thought them, large, heavy-fringed, languishing and passionate, a little frightened-seeming, rather pleading in expression even when she smiled. And she was smiling now as with a noiseless tread she crossed the pale-taupe carpet and extended a slim hand.

"Mon sauveur," she told him in a softly husky voice. "Bienfaiteur. To you I owe a debt I cannot ever pay, no, not even with the eyes of the head!"

He took the little hand in his and, a trifle self-consciously, raised it to his lips, then as he stepped back, made quick appraisal of her. Her gown was china silk, loosely draped from a high waist, and so sheer and clinging that it seemed to follow every curve of her slight figure. The sash that bound it just below the bosom was a three-yard length of pale-rose ribbon tied "en coquette" below the shoulders and trailing in fringed ends almost to her dress hem at the back. Save for the small gold rings that scintillated in her ears she wore no jewelry. As he straightened from his bow he saw her feet were stockingless and shod with sandals fastened with cross-straps of purple grosgrain laced about her ankles. Bible-trained from infancy, Mordecai's mind echoed with a stanza from the Song of