“This, my dear Julien, is so sudden. And then your old-fashioned tactic of appealing to the usually negligible parent is somewhat alarming.” “The fact that you’re her father,” De Medici answered, “is a matter of secondary importance, come to think of it. What I’ve chiefly come for is advice.” “My advice,” Ballau answered softly, “is, of course, marry the gal and live happily ever afterward.” “Thanks. But there’s another thing. Her going on with her acting.” “Tut, tut,” the older man smiled. “Give her her own way. I should think it an excellent arrangement. With ‘The Dead Flower’ going over as it is you should be able to turn out at least one play a year and keep Madame De Medici employed under your auspices.” “Thanks again.” “That being settled,” Ballau sighed, “we might as well have some light—and a glass of cognac. I walked over from the theater and I’m rather cold.” De Medici turned as the door opened. Jane, the gaunt and hollow-eyed housekeeper, was standing on the threshold. “Glasses,” murmured Ballau. The woman nodded and, with a glance at the guest, disappeared. De Medici frowned to himself. This was another of his obsessions—an aversion to silent people. Servants invariably irritated him. Their closed mouths, their waiting eyes, their inscrutable inferiorities disturbed him. “I’ll be back in a minute,” Ballau announced as the footsteps of the woman died away. Alone, De Medici smiled. Phantoms no longer disturbed him. He sat thinking of Victor Ballau. A curious man. Almost as curious as himself, perhaps. Debonair, prosperous, cultured. Yet something odd about him. He had made an actress of his daughter—not a difficult task. The luxurious figure of the young woman intruded on his thoughts. Vivid as a macaw, with a feline slowness in her gesture.... “Ah,” he sighed, “she is a color I need. I grow brittle and antique. She will enable me to live.” For a lingering moment he contemplated the emotions that the image of her had stirred. Tenderness, self-amusement, and an overwhelming loneliness. “As if I were lost away from her,” he mused, “as if I were sick and bewildered for some place to go....” Then his musings returned to her father. Yes, a curious man. A background of tapestries, rare books, antique collections and a chattering circle of poets, dancers, painters, connoisseurs. A quixotic fancy for the theater, he had achieved distinction out of his failures, producing deftly written comedies of manners and dramas of mood that never ran. Yet the theater with its rigmarole of intrigue, gamble, women and craftsmanship was another part of Ballau’s background. But an exterior Ballau, he mused. There was something else about the man, and this thing whispered itself always to De Medici’s sensitive imagination. This man of the theater whose apartment was the haunt of a Sybarite, whose cavalierly manner was the envy of a hundred bon vivants, was, paradoxically, a puritan. A charming and unmalicious puritan.