The photograph lay on a sagging table in de Massloff's room. Gray had pulled it from a stack of twenty and tossed the others to the floorboards. Rain had been falling since five o'clock, and although they had both been drinking steadily they had not succeeded in getting drunk.

Gray's first impressions were casual, almost superficial. He might have been talking to himself. "I like this one. Who is she?"

De Massloff had been half dozing in a rattan chair, idly picking loose plaster from the wall. He generally never discussed his nudes. "Who?"

"The girl with the bicycle. Who is she?"

De Massloff shrugged. "Just a girl, Nicky."

"But I like her."

De Massloff slowly turned his head. The Mata Hari photograph had actually been one of a series, all involving bicycles. They eventually ended up with a pornographer in Liverpool. "The composition isn't right," he finally said.

"Really? I wouldn't have noticed."

"And there's no contrast."

"Yes, but she has marvelous eyes, don't you think?"

Regardless of what would be finally said about the painter's introduction to Margaretha Zelle, that first cool evening remained uneventful. Gray and de Massloff dined near the quais among parties of restless young people like themselves. They chatted briefly with another Russian immigrant, then shared a bucket of oysters. Later, as a testament to these simple evenings, Gray would leave several charcoal sketches of sawdust restaurants, several watercolors of blue lightening on the rooftops. Toward midnight they moved on past the river to a languid terrace near the Tuileries. But here there were only the friends of friends, and Gray's tribute to them never seemed quite defined: dark profiles of women in lamplight, gentlemen with only the shadows of smiles. Indeed, it wasn't until the appearance of Zelle that he even came to understand this world.

"You don't happen to recall her name, do you?"

"Whose name, Nicky?"

"That bicycle girl."

"I think it was Maggie."

"Live in the area?"

"Honestly, Nicky, how can I possibly—"

"Because I think I'd like to paint her, you see. I just want to paint her."

They said nothing more about her that night, and quite possibly she might have been forgotten, along with all the other intriguing strangers that Gray had seen since entering this city: young dancers from the Moulin Rouge, flower girls in the Bois de Boulogne, faces in the windows of passing trains. But two days later, while cleaning out a drawer, de Massloff actually found her name among a list of available models. Jotting it down on a slip of paper torn from a magazine, he waited for Gray until the late afternoon.

"Still interested in that bicycle girl?"

Gray nodded. "I suppose, yes."

"Well her name is Zelle. Margaretha Zelle."

"Got an address?"

"Of course," and just as casually, dropped the paper into Gray's open hand.