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have to go farther afield. Nothing in the dining room or study, either. She nerved herself and called out boldly, “Hello?”
    Silence. This might be her only chance to search upstairs for the missing pitcher.
    Ondine took a deep breath and went up, peering cautiously through the open doorway of a very small and plain bedroom, where the pillows were rumpled and the navy coverlet cast aside.
    Why would he choose to sleep in this little room like a monk? She got her answer when she moved to the next room, which was strangely devoid of a bed, yet cluttered with sketchbooks, newspapers and paint paraphernalia spread out on every available surface.
    What a jumble. Helplessly she scanned the room for the striped pitcher. Nowhere in sight. In this impromptu studio, she did not know what to look at first.
    “What’s he done with it?” she wondered. “Maybe he broke it and threw it out?”
    That seemed unlikely, so she kept looking. A blank canvas stood on an easel in the far corner. Nearby was a small table crowded with unopened pots of paint and pristine brushes. She moved toward an alcove with a skylight overhead, where a large round table was heaped with newspapers and crumpled-up sketches, all thrown randomly about. Anything could be hidden under there.
    Ondine drew closer and peered at the drawings, then involuntarily exclaimed, “
Dieu!
Is
this
what he’s been up to here?”
    At first she averted her eyes, as if a sailor had lured her into an alleyway to show her bad pictures he’d gotten from a whorehouse. But the images were so complicated that she had to go on staring to make sense of them.
    One sketch was a terrifying tangle of two naked figures—a man and a woman—locked in the violent throes of a ferocious animalistic rape that at first seemed more like a lion devouring a horse. But no, these were humans, all right—for no anatomical detail was spared, including their pubic hair and sex organs.
    The female was a sweet-faced blonde with a rather long nose which prevented her from being a true beauty. She had full thighs and arms and breasts and buttocks—a sturdy, athletic-looking girl, yet she was thrown into a position of helpless submission, with her head flung back from the impact of the assault, and her round breasts and belly defenselessly upturned like fleshy melons being devoured by the man—if you could call him a man, for he was a strange, horned beast with a naked human body, his aggressive flanks and penis clearly visible. Yet, he had the head—and even the tail—of a bull; and this creature’s nostrils seemed to be snorting puffs of rage.
    Baffled, Ondine glanced at the other violent pictures and discovered that, although the poses varied, the model was always the same blonde woman. Ondine was relieved that the last sketch was a happier one, depicting the nude beast-man and his naked lady contentedly reclining on a sofa in repose, with wreaths on their heads and goblets of wine in their hands. Behind them was a window indicating a pleasant day outside. The couple looked sweet and companionable, a friendly satyr and his goddess wife at home, becalmed, sated and affectionate.
    This drawing had been held down by a large seashell employed as a paperweight. The shell’s rippling colors of peach and violet and cream were so appealing that Ondine picked it up and held it to her ear to see if she could hear the sea while she continued staring at the images, mesmerized.
    “You like the Minotaur?”
    A rich male voice, speaking in French with a slight Spanish accent, came from the doorway behind her. Ondine whirled about guiltily. Caught nosing around the man’s work already! All the worse since her
Patron
’s career involved drawing naked ladies doing strange things with bestial men. Ondine felt her face flush with shame.
    The man in the doorway looked inscrutable, lounging there with his hands in his pockets, staring intently at her with the darkest, blackest eyes she’d ever seen, his gaze so