The small one called Pablo rose to his feet. “You insult me and my nation. I will challenge you to a duel.”

“Sit down, Pablo, do,” the man nearest him dragged him down again. “You are alarming the young woman and there are few enough of us already without killing us off one by one.”

The dark man turned to me. “I’m sorry, mademoiselle,” he said. “I’m afraid I have the hot temper of my race. You wished to know something?”

“I wondered if you might have met two young American women? One of them wears her hair cut short, like a man, and the other is a painter?”

“There are plenty such in Paris,” one of them said. “Go down to Montparnasse and see.”

“I remember meeting two such Americans,” Pablo said.

“When? Where?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Some weeks ago. At a salon. Possibly chez La Stein? One of them had brought a painting with her. I did not think much of it, so I don’t bother to remember.”

This was getting nowhere. I was beginning to feel more and more desperate, as if I was racing against time. “And if I wish to find out the address of the American painter, Reynold Bryce? Do any of you know where I might find him?”

“Reynold Bryce,” one of them said, leaning back in his chair to study me as if I might be the object of his next painting. “Why would you wish to find him? He is passé, boring, not of this century.”

“Perhaps she wants to model for him?” Pablo said, giving me a roguish look.

“I heard he does not paint people anymore. Only boring landscapes with lots of pretty flowers in them like his friend Monet.”

“I hear he likes his girls young and innocent,” the roguish one continued. “And one can see that she is not innocent, are you, chérie?” His flashing dark eyes challenged me with a most flirtatious smile.

“You insult the lady,” the well-dressed man beside him said. “Now her husband will challenge you to a duel.”

“This I should enjoy. I have been dying for a duel. I haven’t shot my pistol for days.”

“Behave yourself, Pablo,” another said. “This is France, not Spain. You are simply too hot-blooded.”

“Not at all. I am a man who knows what he likes. She can always model for me. She has interesting bones and that red hair—exciting.”

“You’d probably paint it blue,” one of them remarked.

“No-no. That is all behind me now. No more blue for Picasso,” he said. “I see the future and it is exciting.”

The man who was the best dressed among them, wearing a three-piece suit, touched my hand. “Do not worry, chérie,” he said. “You should have no concern about posing for Picasso. If he paints you, you will wind up with three heads, one breast, and one eye. And possibly blue hair. Completely unrecognizable.”