The Belletaille gave him her grateful full face. “I knew it the moment I saw you,” she declared. “You are a mystic, and I think mysticism is so fascinating. You have the eyes. I am a mystic myself. Everybody notices it. Sometimes I think we mystics alone know the true soul of things. What a truth that is, ‘She exists only to be ignored by me!’ You are a painter, aren’t you? It is these young ones, these young mystics, who do the great things. Why do you not paint my portrait?” Ventrillon gulped. “I dared not ask it,” he said. “Then that is settled. We shall begin to-morrow afternoon. But come, take me to my car. It is evident that these surroundings are not for us. Ah, Madame Sutrin,” she said sweetly as she took her hostess’s hand, “it has been _so_ interesting! One finds so many people at your house one would never dream of meeting anywhere else.” When she passed the minister, Ventrillon heard her hiss something into his face. It sounded extraordinarily like, “Never speak to me again!” But Ventrillon was never sure of this, for the jazz band had begun anew. Nevertheless, he distinctly saw little Mme. Ribot look up from under her red hair to observe this brief passage, and then down to contemplate a large wet stain on her satin skirt with a smile of enormous satisfaction. “After all,” reflected Ventrillon, “the great are all ridiculous. It is easier than I had thought.” FOURTH REFLECTION At the curb Ventrillon handed the Belletaille into her limousine. “Till to-morrow,” she said graciously as he stood there bowing, with the hat of eight reflections in his hand. The car, purring, was about to move off, but she signalled the driver with a vibratory gesture of both her long white hands, and then tore with them at the vivid bouquet at her waist. She leaned from the car and thrust a scarlet amaryllis into Ventrillon’s buttonhole. “It is my flower,” she said, “the guaranty of our bargain.” As the car rolled silently from the curb into the traffic, he raised the lapel of his coat and gallantly pressed his lips to the flaming lily. He saw her smile with all her teeth and wave her hand. “Undoubtedly,” he said to himself as he strolled leisurely on down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, “it is because I happened to be designed by nature to wear a hat of eight reflections.” His recent success ran in his blood like champagne. The scarlet badge of it was brave in his buttonhole, and if he had been wearing his old black felt and strolling down the Boulevard St.-Michel, he would have sung. But such behaviour was not for the man he had become. Neither was the company at the Closerie des Lilas. In the Champs-Élysées he passed his good old friend Sabrin, who was promenading Clo-clo on his arm. Clo-clo shook her golden ringlets and giggled. “Regard me that, if you please!” she cried. “Ventrillon has become a bourgeois! Ventri in a hat of eight reflections!” How shabby they looked!