December Love | Page 4

human, simply and absolutely herself as God had made her. And what a rare joy that was, to meet in London a woman of the great world totally devoid of the smallest shred of make-believe! Craven felt that if she appeared before her Maker she would be exactly as she was when she said how do you do to him.
She introduced him to Miss Van Tuyn and the general, made him sit next to her, and gave him tea.
Miss Van Tuyn began talking, evidently continuing a conversation which had been checked for a moment by the arrival of Craven. She was obviously intelligent and had enormous vitality. She was also obviously preoccupied with her own beauty and with the effect it was having upon her hearers. She not only listened to herself while she spoke; she seemed also to be trying to visualize herself while she spoke. In her imagination she was certainly watching herself, and noting with interest and pleasure her young and ardent beauty, which seemed to Craven more remarkable when she was speaking than when she was silent. She must, Craven thought, often have stood before a mirror and carefully "memorized" herself in all her variety and detail. As he sat there listening he could not help comparing her exquisite bloom of youth with the ravages of time so apparent in Lady Sellingworth, and being struck by the inexorable cruelty of life. Yet there was something which persisted and over which time had no empire--charm. On that afternoon the charm of Lady Sellingworth's quiet attention to her girl visitor seemed to Craven even greater than the charm of that girl visitor's vivid vitality.
Sir Seymour, who had the self-contained and rather detached manner of the old courtier, mingled with the straight-forward self-possession of the old soldier thoroughly accustomed to dealing with men in difficult moments, threw in a word or two occasionally. Although a grave, even a rather sad-looking man, he was evidently entertained by Miss Van Tuyn's volubility and almost passionate, yet not vulgar, egoism. Probably he thought such a lovely girl had a right to admire herself. She talked of herself in modern Paris with the greatest enthusiasm, cleverly grouping Paris, its gardens, its monuments, its pictures, its brilliant men and women as a decor around the one central figure--Miss Beryl Van Tuyn.
"Why do you never come to Paris, dearest?" she presently said to Lady Sellingworth. "You used to know it so very well, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes; I had an apartment in Paris for years. But that was almost before you were born," said the husky, sympathetic voice of her hostess.
Craven glanced at her. She was smiling.
"Surely you loved Paris, didn't you?" said Miss Van Tuyn.
"Very much, and understood it very well."
"Oh--that! She understands everything, doesn't she, Sir Seymour?"
"Perhaps we ought to except mathematics and military tactics," he replied, with a glance at Lady Sellingworth half humorous, half affectionate. "But certainly everything connected with the art of living is her possession."
"And--the art of dying?" Lady Sellingworth said, with a lightly mocking sound in her voice.
Miss Van Tuyn opened her violet eyes very wide.
"But is there an art of dying? Living--yes; for that is being and is continuous. But dying is ceasing."
"And there is an art of ceasing, Beryl. Some day you may know that."
"Well, but even very old people are always planning for the future on earth. No one expects to cease. Isn't it so, Mr. Craven?"
She turned to him, and he agreed with her and instanced a certain old duchess who, at the age of eighty, was preparing for a tour round the world when influenza stepped in and carried her off, to the great vexation of Thomas Cook and Son.
"We must remember that that duchess was an American," observed Sir Seymour.
"You mean that we Americans are more determined not to cease than you English?" she asked. "That we are very persistent?"
"Don't you think so?"
"Perhaps we are."
She turned and laid a hand gently, almost caressingly, on Lady Sellingworth's.
"I shall persist until I get you over to Paris," she said. "I do want you to see my apartment, and my bronzes--particularly my bronzes. When were you last in Paris?"
"Passing through or staying--do you mean?"
"Staying."
Lady Sellingworth was silent for an instant, and Craven saw the half sad, half mocking expression in her eyes.
"I haven't stayed in Paris for ten years," she said.
She glanced at Sir Seymour, who slightly bent his curly head as if in assent.
"It's almost incredible, isn't it, Mr. Craven?" said Miss Van Tuyn. "So unlike the man who expressed a wish to be buried in Paris."
Craven remembered at that moment Braybrooke's remark in the club that Lady Sellingworth's jewelry were stolen in Paris at the Gare du Nord ten years ago. Did Miss Van Tuyn know about that? He wondered as he murmured something