"And you had all those thoughts?"
"Oh, no! They are the thoughts I should have had if I hadn't been busy admiring the dresses. The pictures must wait—I shall be going again to see those, perhaps two or three times. Most students do. One is supposed to learn from them, but in practice one only criticises. The boys say everything is rotten. We girls pretend to agree with them, only, of course, it wouldn't be proper to express our opinion as violently as that. Do you dine here as well?"
"I dine as the whim takes me. You see I haven't yet acquired a habit for evening wear. Not every Bohemian can make that boast."
Miss Brooke laughed. "Bohemians mostly acquire bad habits for evening wear. But I'm going to cut Bohemianism altogether so far as my meals are concerned, and settledown in apension. Two or three of the girls live there, and they report well of it. I also made friends while crossing with a girl who was being consigned there."
He asked whether she had had a good crossing, and whether she were a good sailor. Miss Brooke replied that the weather had been perfect the whole way and she had enjoyed herself, and she proceeded to entertain him by relating incidents of the passage. Meanwhile the little restaurant had filled, and was nearly empty again. They rose at last and settled theiradditions. Paul then noticed that Miss Brooke had her painting materials with her, and insisted on carrying them so far as her school. They stepped out into the sunshine, and became aware how fine a day it was.
"The afternoon almost tempts me to cut the Beaux Arts," said Paul.
"By the way, how are you getting on there?" asked Miss Brooke.
He was only too eager to tell her of his progress, and to discuss his chances of a medal. He also gave her an account of the new friends he had made—he liked the American "boys" very much, was indebted to them for endless kindnesses.
"Why didn't you look up Charlie?" she asked suddenly.
"How could I?" he asked, annoyed at the mention of the man's name, reminding him, as it did, of the apparent and inexplicable intimacy between the two, and also telling him they must already have seen each other.
"You could easily have found him if you had inquired among the boys. He lives in his studio and he has scarcely left it the whole time I've been away. By the way, you remember Katharine, don't you? She's married again. To her editor this time. This is my school."
They came to a standstill and faced each other to say "good-bye."
"I scarcely feel like working this afternoon," observed Miss Brooke. "My laziness really overpowers my ambition. Did you not say something before, Mr. Middleton, about your being tempted to cut the Beaux Arts? Do be nice and yield to that temptation. I want to give way to mine so badly, but being a woman I daren't do anything unless somebody else is doing it at the same time."
Paul's fibres of resistance did not relax gradually; they collapsed all at once.
"Well," he laughed. "I've been so good all along, I think I've earned the right to play truant for once."
"Mr. Middleton! That's bringing morality into it again, and I wanted to indulge in undiluted wickedness. You have to carry my box as I'm sufficiently occupied in holding upmy skirts. I'll give you some tea afterwards as a reward."
They strolled slowly in the sunshine, making for the river and crossing by the Pont des Arts; and passed through the Jardins des Tuileries, where the freshness of the greens, and the playing fountains, and the leafy trees, and the pretty children, and the odour of lilac proclaimed the spring. They sauntered across the Place de la Concorde and into the shady avenues of the Champs Elysées, where huge spots of sunlight freckled the ground; talking the while of the life of the city, of the foreign elements, of the Old and New Salons. Miss Brooke explained how her own day was spent. Seven o'clock in the morning found her punctually at school, and she worked two hours before taking hercafé au lait, afterwards continuing till midday. In the afternoon she usually copied and studied at the Louvre or Luxembourg. Such had been theroutine of her work before, and she had had no difficulty in falling into it again. She could not hope to exhibit even next year, as she could neither afford a studio nor the expense of models. At the present she was living with some friends at theirappartementin the Avenue de Wagram. After their departure at the end of May she would enter into thepension, which was within a stone's throw of her school.
Paul, eagerly listening to all these details, was only conscious in a far-off way of the eternal roll of smart carriages in the roadway, or of the multitude of children playing under the trees in charge ofbonnes, whilst the mammas sat about on chairs, chatting, or with books or needlework. Onward the pair strolled past the Arc de Triomphe and down the great Avenue into the Bois de Boulogne, only stopping to rest by the laughing lake. Here the appeal of the water and the mooredboats soon became irresistible. They fleeted the remainder of the afternoon ideally, till Miss Brooke announced it was time to repair to the Avenue de Wagram. Paul was afraid of her friends—he was scarcely presentable.
"Be calm, my friend," she reassured him. "We shall have a nice little tea all to ourselves. The others have gone to Versailles and are only coming back in time to dine. We dinechez nous, as we have abonnewho cooks. Of course I can't be in todéjeuner, as the distance is too great from my school. You must come one evening and I'll present you."
He thanked her for the suggestion, glad to welcome every arrangement that promised in any way to throw their lives together, for he had been not a little afraid he might not after all have the opportunity of seeing very much of her.
As Miss Brooke made the tea in the pretty drawing room of the cosy flat, Paul began to realise with surprise how much progress their friendship had made in that one day. His dream had turned out true! He was so happy that the consciousness of all but the moment faded from him. London, his mother, Celia, and even chess were for the time absolutely non-existent. "Charlie," too, was forgotten, as the obnoxious name had not again dropped from Miss Brooke's lips.
He took his leave at last, filled with joy by Miss Brooke's promise to run in on the morrow todéjeunerat the same little restaurant. But as he turned from the broad stairway into the hall, he almost collided in his pre-occupation with a tall well-dressed man. Both murmured "Pardon!" and pursued their ways. Paul had seenthe other's face, but he had taken several steps forward before the features sank into his brain, and he realised with a great shock they were those of "Charlie."
However, Miss Brooke said nothing to him about Charlie in the days that followed, though he saw her often. Without it being specially mentioned again, it was somehow understood they were, for the present, to meet at mid-day at the little restaurant, and, moreover, she allowed him to take her several times to the two Salons. He might easily have dragged in references to Pemberton, but he felt it would not be right to do so for the mere purpose of discovering what it would have been an impertinence to demand outright.
And the more hiscamaraderiewith Miss Brooke became an established fact, the moredid this question of Charlie disturb him. He had discovered by this time that a harmless friendship between a man and a girl was by no means unusual among the students and was not necessarily assumed to imply matrimonial intentions. He knew, moreover, that such friendships grew rapidly on this soil where the English-speaking students gravitated together during the years of their voluntary exile. But, if this thought pacified him as to Miss Brooke and Charlie, the very pacification carried with it a sting. For it led to the further tormenting suspicion that Miss Brooke did not take the relationship between her and himself as seriously as he would have liked her to. Her conduct and bearing towards him were all he could wish, yet he seemed to feel behind them a stern limit to the intimacy, a barrier, as it were, that might bear on its face: "I am put here by way of givingyou a reminder you are not to make any mistakes as to the extent of your rights over this property."
Sometimes, indeed, in envisaging the position, he came to the conclusion that this was entirely due to his own imagination and that he might safely ask her to share his life. But at that point uncertainty would rise again, warning him that to make any such impulsive proposition just then might be to jeopardise the future of his romance. The remembrance of the distress caused him by his effort to determine the precise degree of Celia's claim on him by reason of his having engaged her for five dances in the same evening intruded in grotesque contrast now that he was endeavouring to determine the precise degree of his claim on Miss Brooke.
Despite these prickings, and despite Charlie, sweetness predominated in his life.He felt untrammelled and unwatched over, recalling with a shudder the old strands that had tethered him. Though he wrote regularly to his mother, whom he had seen twice last autumn, on her way southward and on her return, all reference to Miss Brooke was excluded from his letters. He would not discuss his relation to her with anybody else, foreseeing that would only lead to a deal of useless and perhaps endless talk.
After Miss Brooke had moved to thepension, where she had arranged to take all her meals, he no longer saw her every day. But it was understood he could take his chance of finding her at home whenever he chose to call in the evenings. She generally received him in her little oblong sitting-room on the second floor, that opened out on a pleasant balcony, overlooking the street. He soon grew to love this room, to the decorations of whichshe had added a huge Japanese umbrella, which hung from the ceiling, and two Japanese lights, and a piece of Oriental tapestry, besides her personal nicknacks. Paul's usual lounging-place, whilst Miss Brooke gave him his after-dinner coffee, was an old cretonne-covered ottoman, on which a broken spring made a curious hump, and over his head were suspended some book-shelves. Now and again he would find other callers, of both sexes, for Miss Brooke was "at home" once a week to all her friends. Of course, Paul did not abuse his privilege, but firmly restricted the number of his visits. Occasionally, too, he had the happiness of taking her to dine at some one or other of the great cafés on the Grands Boulevards, and they would stroll back together along the river bank, enchanted by the wonderful nocturnes. On Sunday sometimes, they would make an excursion beyondthe fortifications to some rural spot, she taking her paint-box and sketching lazily whilst they talked; and if, on rare afternoons, he left his work, and looked in at the Luxembourg to find her deftly plying her brush in her big blue coarse linen apron, with its capacious pockets, she seemed by no means displeased.
Every legitimate topic was talked over between them. He had long since exhausted the theme of his own life, that is, he had told it so far as he cared to tell it. Celia, for one thing, did not appear in it, and there were one or two little matters he was especially careful to suppress. He felt vaguely saint-like, when, in the course of this judicious selection from his biography, he arrived at his slumming experiences, and hinted at his charities, which were being continued during his absence. Miss Brooke repaid the confidence in kind,enabling him, by her various reminiscences, to reconstruct a fairly continuous account of her existence, which, it never struck him, might also be selected.
They drifted, too, into the realm of ideas, exchanging their notions on—among other things—love and platonic friendship. They discussed the last-mentioned phenomenon in great detail, Paul, aflame with self-consciousness, but quite unable to pierce beneath the sphinx-like demeanour with which Miss Brooke made her impartial and freezingly impersonal statements. From ideas they passed on to the consideration of conduct and how it should be determined under divers subtle conditions.
"Yes, but don't you really think that oneoughtto listen to such an appealif. . . . ," she would gravely interpose with her sweet voice as her brush made sensuous strokes on the canvas. And Paulbecame more and more impressed with the nobility of her soul, and strove likewise—as was but natural in the circumstances—to impress her with the nobility of his. He usually felt ethically perfect after such conversations, and, had the occasion immediately arisen, it would have found him equal to acting along the lines of the "ought" laid down by Miss Brooke. He imagined that he certainly was receiving endless benefit from this threshing out of things with a quick and sympathetic personality.
So ran by a couple of months, "Charlie" continuing to be the chief cause of disturbance in Paul's existence. The two men had by now met several times at Miss Brooke's, had saluted civilly, but had little to say to each other. Paul felt sure his hatred was returned, and neither showed the least disposition to become better acquainted. Neither asked the other to dine or drink, or playbilliards, or even to walk with him, and if rarely they passed in the street a nod was all they exchanged. The lines of their lives occasionally met in a point, but never ran together.
The enmity between them only became irksome when no others were present, but never did Miss Brooke herself manifest the least suspicion of it. Whatever the relation between Miss Brooke and Pemberton, it never seemed to interfere in practice with the relation between Miss Brooke and himself. She alluded to "Charlie" in her talk much more freely than heretofore, but always apropos, always impersonally, just as she might casually mention Katharine, who was so happy now. Charlie had such and such a habit, such and such a way of looking at things, such and such ideas of art.
But Paul's jealousy grew till he became well-nigh intolerable to himself. It made himresort to underhand watchings, from the mere thought of which, in saner moments, he shrank with shame and remorse. But he had thus ascertained that Charlie was, if anything, a more frequent visitor than himself, and had less scruples in the matter of standing on ceremony.
Onenight Paul was at the Opera when he caught sight of Miss Brooke and Pemberton with her. His evening was spoilt and he left at once. He felt both angry and hurt, for he had seen her for a few minutes in the afternoon, and she had said nothing about her plans for the evening beyond warning him it was highly probable she might not be at home.
The climax had come. He was determined that things should not continue as they were. If Miss Brooke simply regarded their connection as a mere students' companionship, agreeable to both parties but strictly temporary, then he must end it immediately. MissBrooke must at once be made aware of what this friendship meant to him. What he had so far deemed inexpedient seemed to him the only expediency—to stake all on one coup.
In the stress of the crisis the prejudices that were his by inheritance and teaching, and that his new life had caused to slumber, asserted themselves again, crying aloud against these friendships. Miss Brooke ought never to have expected him to be proof against that sort of thing, of which he had never had experience. Pemberton might be able and content to flutter round without hurt, but he himself had been a lost man from the beginning.
It soothed him to map out the future as he wished it to be, and all seemed so natural and reasonable that, if she cared for him in the least, she could not but admit his views on every point. He felt himself filled with aninfinite longing, an infinite tenderness. He would surround her with his love so that escape from it should be impossible. It should permeate every fibre of her being, and she should in the end come to him and give up everything to fulfil the duties of a wife, presiding over his household, absorbing herself in his career, and giving all her thought to the unity their two lives would constitute. Of course, she could paint in such time as was left to her, and any glory she might achieve would redound to the credit of his name. Still when a woman had once become a wife, he argued, her ambition generally faded. Wifehood was absorbing. Greater glory than that of being a perfect wife there could not be.
A few days later, when his emotion had somewhat calmed down, and he could trust himself sufficiently to see her, he called at thepension, but, as had happened occasionallyfrom the beginning, he did not find her at home. So the next morning he sent her a great heterogeneous mass of flowers with the half-jesting, half-reproachful hope they might meet with better fortune than he. Whereupon he immediately received a letter explaining she had passed the previous evening with some very nice people in the Avenue Kléber, and announcing her intention of taking him there on the morrow. Would he dine early and call for her? She thanked him for the flowers in a postscript, saying they had transformed her room into a veritable bower.
At the time appointed he climbed the well-known two flights of stairs and thebonneshowed him into the little room, sayingmademoisellewould join him "in a little minute." Several big minutes passed, and then the door-hanging was pushed aside and Miss Brooke stood smiling at him. She had always appealed to his æsthetic side, giving him thesense of contemplating an exquisite piece of art-work; but the particular impression he had to-night differed from all previous ones. Her figure seemed slenderer in its black net evening dress, covered with bead-work that glistened with a wonderful shading of green into blue and blue into green. Above the turquoise-blue velvet trimming of the bodice, her long neck made a dazzling whiteness, and her face looked pink and babyish, whilst her curls lay about with just a shade more severity than usual. She wore a necklace of turquoises set in antique gold, and in her hair was a big gold comb inset with the same stones, irregularly cut. The note of colour thus given made her blue eyes appear like two large jewels amid the constellation. Paul told himself he had never realised beforehowbeautiful those eyes were. The lightly-parted lips intensified the babyishness, so that she ceased to be the independent, self-willed girl, fitting in ratherwith that other conception he had lingered on as the ideal she might develop into as his wife—a woman clinging to her husband and glad of his strength.
He was sure he saw her now as she really was. The conditions of her life were alone to blame for forcing on her the necessity of a career. Woman's true sphere was the home. An outside existence subjected to hardening influences a delicate soul whose very nature was to thirst for tender nurture and love. Such had always been his mother's conviction; such was his fervent belief. The association of Miss Brooke with money-earning seemed an ugly blot on the universe.
There seemed, too, a tenderer, more intimate quality in her voice, and a sort of clinging in her touch as she went down the stairway with her hand on his arm. That forbidding barrier of which he had always been conscious had vanished!
"It's the McCook's last 'At-Home,'" she explained, as thevoiturebegan to move. "They are such nice people—I'm sure you'll like them. Dora's an old college chum of mine, and she's asked me to stay with her to-night. Dora and I chat such a deal when we get together, and we always enjoy sitting up nice and quiet by ourselves after everybody else has gone. I told her you would escort me home, but she seemed quite shocked at the idea. As if you haven't escorted me back from the theatre! Dora has become quite conventional since her marriage. She used to argue with her mother and do pretty well as she liked not so very long ago. Now I believe her mother shocks her sometimes. She's leaving with her husband in a few days for Perros-Guirec, and they're going to take me with them."
Her words rang with a childlike joy. He asked where Perros-Guirec was in a voice thatwas somewhat desolate at the prospect of losing her.
"It's in Brittany—a whole day's journey from Paris. I was there two years ago, and sketched most of the time. Everybody is thinking of leaving now, the heat will soon be getting unbearable. The Grand Prix has been run, the Battle of Flowers has been fought, and the Allée de Longchamps is deserted. All the smart people are invillégiature. How nice is the evening after the sultry day!"
They were passing through the Boulevard St. Germain. Miss Brooke was sitting just close enough to Paul for them to touch with the swaying of the carriage. He felt singularly happy. The hushed sounds of the city over which the dusk hung mystic came to him like a soft sustained tone of music; its lights gleamed in upon them with magic rays. He was conscious of the great dark masses of palaces, of shadowy pedestrians moving noiselesslyon the side-paths. No fever in the air now, only a far-reaching calm.
"The night makes one almost sorry to leave Paris," resumed Miss Brooke. Her voice made the harmonies sweeter, blending them all into one perfect harmony.
"But the breezes, and the woods, and the rye-fields, and the farm-houses with their delicious old oak presses, and the kind-hearted people, and the quaint children who love to watch you sketch and see you squeeze the paint out of the tubes—the memory of all these things draws you back to them. I long for Brittany almost as much as I once longed to leave everything and everybody and be just myself—and by myself. It seems so long ago now."
She had almost unconsciously moved closer to him now.
"Won't you tell me when that was—Lisa?"
It was the first time he had dared to call her by this name. In his longing to utter it in articulate speech it had rushed to the tip of his tongue.
"It was three years ago—before I came here. Every place had associations that hurt me. I wanted to get away—to work, work, work. I seemed to hate everybody. So I came here, and for months I thought I was as hard as a stone. Then one day I found myself angry with a girl—a fellow-student—and I was quite surprised to find I could feel at all. And then I was suddenly glad I was a human being again."
Her voice melted away into the vast murmur of the soft-twinkling city. Beyond the fact that he was selfishly glad she had had trouble—it afforded him the exquisite pleasure of sympathy—there was no active thought in him now, no estimation of the position. His soul alone dominated; it hadbeen moved to responsiveness and it now wrought out its mood, subtly surrounding her, he felt, with its comfort.
They crossed the mysterious, glistening river, and came upon the myriad flame-points of the Place de la Concorde. They turned into the Champs Elysées betwixt woods enchanted by the sorcerer Night; catching glimpses of palaces of light amid the trees whence melody came floating, mingled with the incense of the summer.
"Won't you tell me, Lisa—that is, if you think you can trust me."
It was sweet to exercise the privilege of calling her "Lisa." He felt it was his for always now.
"I know I can trust you, Paul. Would you really care to hear? Of course you would," she continued quickly, giving him no time to reply. "What a silly question for me to ask! Still there is little to tell!I loved a man. We were to be married. His mind was poisoned against me by an enemy. He was harsh and unjust. A few words sum all up. He is married to another. A commonplace chapter, is it not? But to have lived through it—to have lived through it!"
He grew dazed and white. "To have lived through it!" Those simple words seemed to his comprehending mood athrob with the sobbing of great grief.
"But you do not love him now?" he breathed.
"No, no! All is over now. But I brooded and brooded and thought—the experience made me a woman. Life is a serious thing to me now. I feel better and stronger for what I have suffered. But the memory remains."
"You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Lisa. Surely there are happier memoriesin store for you. It is for you but to shape the future."
He longed for her impulsive "How?" and had his answer ready. It seemed a strange thing, but this confession of a past love, this telling of a great sorrow in her life, had wrought a spell upon him. His eyes were full of tears. In that moment his love for her seemed to have increased a thousandfold. The surprise with which the revelation had overwhelmed him was lost in the rush of pity. She had suffered, and by his love he would make everything up to her.
But now there came a sudden change, slight in its outward manifestation, but felt by him like a chill blast, for his soul vibrated to hers, registering every subtle shade of her mood. She did not speak immediately, and he knew that moment of silence was fatal.
They had passed the round point of the Champs Elysées, and the woods and gardens had ended. Only the gianthôtelsrose on either hand. There seemed more carriages darting about now, a greater movement of life, a general sense of disenchantment in the air, of an awakening from a dream to the clattering reality of things. Paul realised that the spell was broken.
Miss Brooke had turned her head for a moment to look through the window.
"We shall be there in two or three minutes now," she said, as a sort of natural outcome of her ascertaining their exact whereabouts. "I am afraid I must rather have depressed you. It is scarcely courteous to our hostess for us to arrive in so gloomy a mood."
She gave a little laugh which set his every nerve a-tingle, so certainly did itsring lack the appealing quality that had brought him so close to her. It seemed to thrust him back abruptly and brutally.
"Tell me, Paul, haven't you ever had any love affairs?" she went on to ask, and there was a suspicion of banter in her tone. "I've told you all about my tragedy, now tell me about yours or all yours. I know we've told each other all our lives before, but of course we both bowdlerized. The most interesting parts have yet to be told."
As she had asked him a direct question he felt constrained to answer it. He found himself considering whether his relation to Celia need count as a love affair, but he was so convinced he had never been in love with her at all that he decided he could leave her out without doing violence to his conscience. Altogether there had been in his life two very minor and foolish amourettesthat might have became entanglements; one with a barmaid when he was in the lawyer's office, some of the clerks having persuaded him the girl "was gone on him," the other with a simple maiden of sixteen, the daughter of a market gardener, which idyll had proceeded at his father's country seat. Paul told the latter—it was a boyish passion that had come to nothing and stood for nothing in his life; the former he was ashamed of. "I proposed to her and gave her a mortal fright. She was so scared she ran away. We were both shamefaced when we met again, and my spurt of pluck was at an end. I dared not say another word to her, and somehow we drifted out of being sweethearts. I was barely nineteen at the time."
Miss Brooke laughed again heartily, but Paul only felt the gloomier.
"Tell me some more, please. You putme into quite a cheerful humour. What was your next love affair?"
She had resumed her old militant badinage.
"There is nothing more in my biography that is likely to entertain you," he answered evasively.
"Is it so bad as that, Paul? I think you might tell me all the same. I'm not easily shocked."
"You mistake me. I have told you all," he replied, driven to the lie direct.
"Come, come, Mr. Paul. In a woman one might expect such a want of candour. But suppose I tell youmyother affairs—will that encourage you to tell me yours? Is it a bargain?"
"Your other affairs?" he repeated.
"Did you imagine I've had only one in my life? That's paying me a very poor compliment. This is our destination."
"Why do you tease me, Lisa?" heasked, as they descended. He was relieved that the drive had come to an end. It had been a trying time for him. He wondered what it was all coming to? Just when the critical moment had come she had practically inhibited him from speaking. She was a strange, baffling girl, and he was helpless in her hands.
"I'm not teasing you, I simply want to finish my confessions. You must dance three dances with me, and talk to me a lot after. Perhaps I shall succeed in softening you and then you'll be more tractable. We dance till midnight. After that we sup and converse till dawn. It seems there are special complications and permissions for dancing and music in the small hours, as one's neighbours above and below are apt to want to sleep just then. Dora shirked the bother, especially as her French is so weak and her husband's worse."
They went up the stairway and were warmly welcomed by Mrs. McCook. It was a pleasant gathering of nice-looking men and pretty girls, but Paul was only half alive to it. To him it was scarcely more than a mere background for the further development of his drama. So far he took these further love-affairs of Miss Brooke as the purest make-believe, but all the same he was curiously uneasy and anxious to hear what she had in mind to tell him.
When he could talk to her again, he could discover no trace in her manner of her having lived through with him a supreme emotional moment. The softness that had given him a glimpse of infinite love, and which he had perhaps hoped might reveal itself again, was absent; in its place the old niceness and the frank friendliness of comradeship, and with them the old warning to him to stand back. Sheproceeded to give him the promised account of her various lovers in a light, mocking mood.
"I began very early, much earlier than your simple country maiden. My memories of childhood are rather hazy, but I should say I must have had a lover before I was out of my cradle. But I was thirteen before my heart was really moved. Since then I have been in love with so many men that I really can't remember half of them. However, I'll try and pick out those that affected me most seriously at the time. The first one was really a very nice schoolboy. His idea of love-making was to feed me incessantly with candy, which he did for a whole year till I fell a victim to the charms of another boy. The two fought. Both emerged from the combat with black eyes, which rather spoilt their beauty, and therefore killed my interest in them. It requiredquite an heroic effort, though, to refuse their offerings."
"And was this method of love-making as satisfying to them as it was to you?" asked Paul, beginning to be confirmed in his supposition that Miss Brooke was joking.
"Oh, we used to have clandestine meetings and we used to kiss, of course. That made me rather tired of them. They wanted to be kissing the whole time."
Paul had a momentary vertigo, though he professed by his manner to be listening in the same spirit as Miss Brooke narrated.
"The first one was always a nice boy even when he grew up and was always ready to fall in love with me again. But one fine day he got engaged, wrote to tell me about it, and asked me to congratulate him. He married. That finishes with him.
"The next interesting one was a collegeman. I was about sixteen then and at the height of my musical ambition. He was musical, too, in fact quite an enthusiast. He used to pilot me about to concerts and send me tickets for the opera. Besides I was struggling then with Latin, Greek, and Conic Sections, and he used to help me polish off things—for selfish reasons, of course."
"And used you to kiss this time as well?" he asked, no longer questioning that he was hearing her personal history.
"Only at very sentimental moments," she replied, apparently overlooking the mockery in his voice. "I was older and a greater expert in emotions. One's first experiments are necessarily crude. But, to proceed, my cavalier lost his head one day and wanted me to marry him at once, which was rather absurd. So I had to give him hiscongéand accept the attentions of a less violent lover. I had always a reserve to draw upon, but so long as a manbehaved nicely and didn't get altogether unreasonable, I let it accumulate. My musical friend, however, gave me some trouble. We had several stormy interviews, and at last I had positively to refuse to see him. One fine day he, too, got engaged and wrote to me asking me to congratulate him. I know he was divorced some time since, but I've completely lost sight of him."
At this moment Miss Brooke was led away to dance, but was able to join him again before very long.
"The next——" were her first words, in a mock-solemn, long-drawn-out tone, as she took his arm and then she broke into laughter. "The next was a tall Southerner with nice manners, a soft voice, and a pretty way of calling me 'ma'am.' He, too, was musical—naturally, I preferred musical lovers then. The Colonel, as everybody called him, literally worshipped me, but he was as poor as achurch mouse, and I used to think myself very noble to be satisfied to get stuck with him in back seats at concert-halls. He went back South after graduating, swearing he'd never forget me; but, as soon as he'd made his fortune, he was coming back to marry me. I thought that if the illusion would help him to make his fortune, he might as well keep it. In any case I should have given him cause to be grateful to me. He wrote to me half-a-dozen times, then there was a break of some months; and, when I had almost forgotten him, one fine day I got a letter from him."
"Announcing his engagement and asking you to congratulate him," said Paul, with bitterness.
"Yes. I think you may take that for granted. It is what they all do. Is it any use my telling you more? I'm beginning to think the recital is getting monotonous. And then there are some coming along and I can't rememberthe exact order, which came before which."
She seemed to hurry over her last words as though impatient to be done, and wearied and bored by the memory of all these dallyings with sentiment. The mocking merriment appeared also to have died out of her face and voice. She gazed idly at the dancers who, in the restricted space, almost constantly brushed up against them as they stood pressed close to the wall. Paul wondered if he were looking haggard. The air of careless merriment he had at first forced himself to assume had given way, as he listened, to a sort of nervous apathy. The one great passion of hers she had confided to him had drawn him closer to her by its intrinsic dignity. It had appealed to his finer nature, stirring it to its very depths. But these later revelations of hers revolted him by their very pettiness. What had her parents been at that such a girl had beenallowed to run wild in that fashion? It was monstrous she had not been supervised and prevented from stooping to these foolish and frivolous relations with foolish and frivolous men—men she had allowed to kiss her lips!
The pang that tore him at the image revealed to him how powerless he was. He glanced at her again as she stood at his side. There was a half-sad expression now on her face, which had resumed all its babyishness again. The lock of hair near her ear lay about in a dainty twist. Her lips showed innocent and red. To kiss themhewould lay down his life!
He was shaken; he wanted to sob aloud. But he was at a festive gathering. Round, round, up and down the room went the dancers, shuffling forward with their rapid glide, the men bending their long, supple bodies, the flowing curves of the women's dresses imparting a greater grace to the movement.The whole scene was dreamy to him. His inner thought was the only reality.
Why had she told him, why had she told him? he moaned within himself. Then as he saw a new softness appear in her face, a gleam of comfort came to him. Perhaps it had been from motives of conscience and she really repented all; perhaps, too, she had thought it right to tell him everything before allowing him to ask her to be his.
He would overlook all those episodes if only she would be his. If even they had been more serious, if even she had been a dishonoured woman, he knew now he would have had no strength not to condone. If any one had told him a year ago that he—Paul—would one day be both willing and eager to make such concessions as regards the past of a woman he contemplated making his wife, he would have denied the statement indignantly as a libel on himself.
She turned suddenly, and their looks met. Her face lighted up with a smile. "Come, Paul, it's your turn now?"
"My turn!" he echoed, her words for the moment startlingly sounding like an invitation to take his place in the procession of her lovers.
"Yes," she said. "Who was your sweetheart after the gardener's daughter?"
He denied any further love, though hating to tell the lie. But Miss Brooke persisted, entreating, provoking, urging, coaxing, pouting; subtly transforming herself into the child with its lovable moods and movements; enslaving him, rendering him powerless at her will, with this one strange exception—he could be strong enough to withhold from her the episode he was ashamed of.
"Paul, Paul," she said sternly. "Tell the truth. Are you not in love now?"
He scarcely dared look at her. He was conscious of that lock again and of another on her forehead.
"Silence betrays. Did you come to Paris for the sake of your architecture or to be near me?"
"To be near you, Lisa," he breathed.
Althoughthe thought of Lisa's old flirtations obtruded and pricked occasionally, Paul went about the next morning in a state of subdued happiness. A wonderful calm had come over him, disturbed only at the moments when he had to thrust from him those images of other men kissing Lisa's lips. Those meaningless loves had been long dead, he argued, and, since she had made the confession voluntarily at the risk of estranging his love, it would be unfair to her for him to dwell upon them now.
At the same time he could never have conceived the possibility of such a line of argument on his part in the days before hehad met Miss Brooke. Love had, indeed, set at naught all the principles he had thought to abide by—had made him yield his demand for that absolute soul-virginity he had deemed the very basis of his choice.
But away with all that now! Her love for him was, of a surety, the first that had come into her life since her great sorrow. As for Pemberton, there had never been the slightest sentiment between her and him. No doubt the fellow would now take a suitable place in the background of their life, and they would welcome him as an acquaintance. Why should he bear the man animosity?
He could not do any work that morning, but strolled hither and thither, getting joyous impressions from the sun-lit city. Lisa had not only promised to dine in the evening at the Café Pousset and afterwards to go with him to see a melodrama at the Ambigu, most of the other theatres having closed theirdoors, but she had given him permission to take his holiday at Perros-Guirec during the whole two months of her stay there, so that he would be virtually one of the party. The immediate outlook was, therefore, very agreeable.
He returned to themaison meubléewhere his quarters were, immediately after his mid-day meal, and passed the afternoon packing away his luggage, which occupation gave him the pleasurable feeling that his preparations for the happy time to come were in full swing. He sang and whistled as he worked, his overflowing vigour manifesting itself in the bold ornamental letters with which he made out the labels for his trunks: "Middleton, Paris à Perros-Guirec." At half-past five he began to think of taking a stroll before dinner, and was on the point of doing so when theconciergebrought him up a letter with the characteristicexplanation that it had come in the morning, shortly after monsieur had gone out, and that he had forgotten about it as monsieur passed by before.
Paul recognised his mother's writing, and stayed to read it. At first it did not seem to contain anything of special importance, covering much the same ground as many of its predecessors, and dealing with one or two business matters. On the third page came a reproach that he had allowed three weeks go by without writing.
"I can understand," continued his mother, "that all those hours of engrossing work every day must leave you quite fatigued, my poor child. But surely I am very reasonable in my demands, and one letter a week is not such a very heavy tax on you. Are you sure you are not overworking yourself, dear Paul? You were always a delicate child, and you are certainly not strong enough togo on living in a French hotel, with only strangers to look after you. Don't you think you ought to take a long holiday now? I am going to take Celia to Dieppe—it has all been decided and arranged to-day. The poor child has been worried and fretting and poorly for a long time past, and sadly needs this entire change of scene. Now suppose, dear Paul, you come and join us at Dieppe. You will be near to me, and I can look after you again, if only for a couple of months. We shall be starting the day after to-morrow, and we shall be staying at the Hôtel de Paris. Write to me, dear Paul, direct there, or, better still, come down and surprise us. Celia, I am sure, will bedelightedto see you. I never understood what happened between you two exactly. You said 'good-bye' so stiffly that I made sure you had quarrelled, though Celia assures me that was not so. She is adear, good girl, and I love her as if she were my own daughter."
Of course he couldn't go. What a bother to have to refuse! Why had they just fixed on Dieppe when they might have gone to Norway or taken a jaunt up to Scotland! And then, too, confound it! they might even make a descent upon him at Perros-Guirec, for he would have to tell his mother that was the place where he had already arranged to spend his holiday with friends. He must discuss the matter with Lisa before replying to her or telling her of his intended marriage.
But he had scarcely time to digest the letter before the man brought him up another which the postman had just left. This time the writing was Lisa's. What could she have to write to him about if it were not to postpone the evening's engagement? His nervous fingers tore at the envelope.