“Please, madame.” The shoes were already off, and Céline was replacing them in their open box. “They’re so beautiful. I couldn’t help it, madame. I—”

“They do, don’t they?” said Genevieve. “They fit you perfectly.”

“You won’t sack me, will you?” She was sliding her feet back into her own shoes—flat brown lace-ups with a square toe. “I’ve never done this before. I won’t do it again.”

Out in the street, the horn sounded again.

“I find that difficult to believe.”

“I thought you’d gone down to the car with Mr. Shelby King. I never imagined…My mother is ill, madame. I don’t know what we’ll do if I lose my job.”

The horn sounded yet again.

“Please, madame.”

Genevieve felt strangely moved by the scene. It was partly the way the shoes had looked on the girl, but it was more than that. She had stumbled inadvertently on someone else’s secret life, become suddenly aware of another person’s most potent and covetous desires and fears at a moment when she’d been subsumed by her own. Céline had woken her out of herself in a way that was utterly surprising and strangely delicious.

“Genevieve!” came Robert’s voice from below.

“It’s all right,” she said softly to the girl. “You can keep your job. And the shoes. Not a word to Mr. Shelby King. It’ll be our secret.”

Somewhere in the background the telephone was ringing.

( fourteen )

RAIN FELL ON THE golden velvet wrap with the sumptuous Australian opossum edgings, on the André Perugia gold kid shoes. Rain fell on the heavily jeweled satin headband and the Lina Cavalieri coiffure. Rain fell on Genevieve as she knocked on the door of Paolo Zachari’s shop and waited, sodden, nervy, excited—perhaps ever so slightly unhinged.

At last, a fussing with bolts on the other side.

“Mrs. Shelby King.”

“Mr. Zachari.”

“You’re very dressed up for a visit to the humble shoemaker, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Let me in. I’ve had enough of your games.”

“And I of yours. May I take your wrap?”

She shoved it at him, remembering with embarrassment the last time she had done this, and pushed past.

Inside, the shop was completely dark. Not a chink of light showed through the curtained, shuttered windows. And when Zachari closed the front door, the darkness was complete.

His voice, close by. “Take your shoes and stockings off, please.”

“I can’t see a thing. Could you open the curtains or turn a light on?”

“Take your shoes and stockings off.”

Robert would be arriving at the Rue Cambon by now, without her. The dancers would be setting up.

“Put a light on, Mr. Zachari.”

“Take your shoes and stockings off. Surely you can manage something so simple.”

She sighed and said, “All right” and bent to remove the damp Perugia pumps. “May I sit down?”