?"

"Eh?" The little babbling official had a moment of doubt. But he
reflected that one is not a great artist without being eccentric; and
his amiable brow cleared.

"She is certainly a type," he said, peering on tiptoe. "Wonderful!
You cast your eye upon all this crowd and at once, in a single
glance, you pluck forth the type--wonderful! As to a place, that is
easy. My office is at your service."

The girl lifted hunted and miserable eyes to the tall, grave man who
looked down upon her and raised his hat.

"I have something to say to you," he said. "Come with me."

A momentary frantic hope flamed in her thin countenance. It sank, and
she hesitated. Girls of her world are practiced in discounting such
requests. But Rufin's courteous and fastidious face was above
suspicion; without a word she followed him.

The office to which he led her was an arid, neat room, an economical
legal factory for making molehills into mountains. A desk and certain
chairs stood like chill islands about its floor; it had the forlorn
atmosphere of a waiting-room. The little official whose workshop it
was held open the door for them, followed them in, and closed it
again. "Do not be alarmed, my child," he said to the tragic girl.
"This gentleman is a great artist. You will be honored in serving
him."

Rufin stilled him with an upraised hand and fetched a chair for the
girl. She rested an arm on the back of it, but did not sit down. She
did not understand why she had been brought to this room, and stared
with hard, preoccupied eyes at the tall man with the mild, still
face.

"I recognized you by a picture I saw some months ago in a room in
Montmartre," said Rufin.

"It was a great picture, the work of a great man."

"Ah!" The girl let her breath go in a long sigh. "Monsieur knows him,
then? And knows that he is a great man? For he is--he is a great
man!"

She spoke with passion, with a living fervor of conviction, but her
eyes still appealed.

"You and I both know it quite certainly, Mademoiselle," replied
Rufin. "Everybody will know it very soon. It is a truth that cannot
be hidden. But where is the picture?!"

"I have it," she answered.

"Take care of it, then," said Rufin. "You have a great trust. And the
painter--have you got him, too?"

She stared at him, bewildered. "The painter? The painter of the
picture?"

"Of course," said Rufin. "Who else?"

"But----" she looked from him to the benign official, who had the air