Something else that his glass showed him gave him more anxiety and appeared beyond concealment: Chitta's claws had left two long scratches across his right cheek. He had no powder and no money to buy any. He did think of trying a touch of his own paint, but he feared that oils were not suited to the purpose and would only make the wound more noticeable. He would simply have to let it go. He had wakened with the first ray of sunlight that set the birds to singing in the garden, and, Chitta's fall of the previous evening having spilled his coffee and devastated his supplies, he was forced to go without a _petit déjeuner_. He found a little tobacco in one of his coat-pockets and smoked that until the bells of St. Sulpice, after an unconscionable delay, rang the glad hour for which he waited. Chitta opened the door to his knock, and he was at once aware of her mistress standing, in white, behind her; but the old duenna was aware of it too and ordered herself accordingly. Chitta bowed low enough to appease the watchful Lady of the Rose, but Chitta's eyes, as she lowered them, glowered at him suspiciously. It was clear that she by no means joined in the welcome that the Lady immediately accorded him. The Lady, in clinging muslin and with a black lace scarf of delicate workmanship draped over her black hair, gave him her hand, and this time Cartaret was not slow to kiss it. The action was one to which he was scarcely accustomed, and he hesitated between the fear of being discourteously brief about it and the fear of being discourteously long. He could be certain only of how cool and firm her hand was and, as he looked up from it, how pink and fresh her cheeks. It was then that the Lady saw the scratches. "Oh, but you have had an accident!" she cried. Cartaret's hand went to his face. He looked at Chitta: Chitta's returning glance was something between an appeal and a threat, but a trifle nearer the latter. "I had a little fall," said Cartaret, "and I was scratched in falling." The room was bare, but clean and pleasant, fresh from the constant application of Chitta's mop and broom, fresher from the Spring breeze that came in through the front windows, and freshest from the presence of the Lady of the Rose. Two curtained corners seemed to contain beds. At the rear, behind a screen, there must have been a gas-stove where Chitta could soon be heard at work upon the breakfast. What furniture there was bore every evidence of being Parisian, purchased in the Quarter; there was none to indicate the nationality of the tenants; and the bright little table, at which Cartaret was presently seated so comfortably as to forget the necessity of the Pre-Raphaelite pose, was Parisian too. "You must speak French," smiled the Lady--how very white her teeth were, and how very red her lips!--as she looked at him across the coffee-urn: "that is the sole condition that, sir, I impose upon you."