“Two of them held the gendarme, while the third cut his throat with his own sword.  A grotesque touch, that—­vous ne trouvez pas? tres fort!”—­the official was remarking when Rufin took him by the arm.

“That girl,” he said.  “You see her?—­against the wall there.  I cannot talk with her in this crowd, and I must talk to her at once.  Where is there some quiet Place?”

“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 of presiding at a ceremony.  “Then you don’t know?  You haven’t heard?”