XV. Hearts and Flowers 238 In which Florence takes up the drama. A taxicab, as in the beginning. In which what is left of the reader’s suspense and curiosity is carefully removed. THE FLORENTINE DAGGER CHAPTER I VELVET SOULS Containing a nervous cavalier with frightened eyes—Introducing a mysterious and puritanical satyr—And discussing the tired ghosts that haunted the heart of Julien De Medici. In the firelight the face of Julien De Medici appeared like a gray and scarlet mask of ennui. Oblivious of the ornamental room with its pattern of books, statues and tapestries, he sat stiffly in the carved wooden chair and stared at the burning logs. He was waiting for his host, Victor Ballau. Except for the crackling of the burning wood, the room was still. Cowled shadows reared witch-like shapes across the walls and ceiling. It was night outside. Wind quarreled with the stone buildings. Removing his eyes reluctantly from the burning logs, De Medici glanced at the darkness of the empty room. He studied the shadows with frightened eyes. He was a curious man of thirty. An aristocratic ugliness marked his face. The long, thin nose, the high cheek-bones, the wide, inanimate mouth and the green-tinted skin gave him a lithographic rather than human air. His black hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. He wore it unparted in such a manner that it made an almost square frame for the elongated rigidity of his face. A striking and bizarre figure, poised, precise and seemingly of another world, he lived chiefly in his eyes. They were narrow and black, symmetrical to a point of artificiality. But under the parenthesis of the brows lived a startling man. From the carved chair before the burning logs, De Medici studied the shadows. He disliked darkness and empty rooms. Shadows frightened him. Opened doors chilled him. Yet his immobile face smiled derisively. “Fear,” he thought. “It’s like a disease.” He smiled again as if amused at the emotion disturbing him. “Ghosts,” he continued to himself. His eyes were on the opened door in the shadows at the end of the room. “Ghosts walk around inside me.” And he fell to thinking of an old subject—of the ghosts that prowled the mysterious corridors of his soul.... De Medici—ah, what a name! A sarcophagus of evil.... He recalled with a shudder the excitement of the critics who had written about the opening of his play at Victor Ballau’s theater two weeks ago. One of them in particular had given him a bad hour. A discerning fellow.... He remembered the critic’s phrases: