THE ARM-CHAIR AT THE INN
I went to bed that night he had mixed up the dry plaster in his bucket and taken the cast. He wanted to keep the matrix, but I wouldn’t have it. I did not want his dirty fingers feeling around her lovely face, and so I paid him his blood money and pounded the mould out of shape. The next morning I left Ravenna for Paris.
“You see now, messieurs, what a disreputable person I am.” Here he rose from his seat and walked back to the bas-relief. “And yet, most blessed of women”—and he raised his eyes as if in prayer—“I think I would do it all over again to have you where you could always listen to my sins.”
162
