Jason | Page 2

folds of the white silk muffler with which for some obscure reason he had swathed his neck.
"This is the first time in many years," said the Englishman, "that I have known you to be silent for ten whole minutes. Are you ill, or are you making up little epigrams to say at the dinner-party?"
Ste. Marie waved a despondent glove.
"I 'ave," said he, "w'at you call ze blue. Papillons noirs--clouds in my soul." It was a species of jest with Ste. Marie--and he seemed never to tire of it--to pretend that he spoke English very brokenly. As a matter of fact, he spoke it quite as well as any Englishman and without the slightest trace of accent. He had discovered a long time before this--it may have been while the two were at Eton together--that it annoyed Hartley very much, particularly when it was done in company and before strangers. In consequence he became on such occasions a sort of comic-paper caricature of his race, and by dint of much practice, added to a naturally alert mind, he became astonishingly ingenious in the torture of that honest but unimaginative gentleman whom he considered his best friend. He achieved the most surprising expressions by the mere literal translation of French idiom, and he could at any time bring Hartley to a crimson agony by calling him "my dear "'before other men, whereas at the equivalent "mon cher" the Englishman would doubtless never, as the phrase goes, have batted an eye.
"Ye-es," he continued, sadly, "I 'ave ze blue. I weep. Weez ze tears full ze eyes. Yes." He descended into English. "I think something's going to happen to me. There's calamity, or something, in the air. Perhaps I'm going to die."
"Oh, I know what you are going to do, right enough," said the other man. "You're going to meet the most beautiful woman--girl--in the world at dinner, and of course you are going to fall in love with her."
"Ah, the Miss Benham!" said Ste. Marie, with a faint show of interest. "I remember now, you said that she was to be there. I had forgotten. Yes, I shall be glad to meet her. One hears so much. But why am I of course going to fall in love with her?"
"Well, in the first place," said Hartley, "you always fall in love with all pretty women as a matter of habit, and, in the second place, everybody--well, I suppose you--no one could help falling in love with her, I should think."
"That's high praise to come from you," said the other. And Hartley said, with a short, not very mirthful laugh:
"Oh, I don't pretend to be immune. We all--everybody who knows her. You'll understand presently."
Ste. Marie turned his head a little and looked curiously at his friend, for he considered that he knew the not very expressive intonations of that young gentleman's voice rather well, and this was something unusual. He wondered what had been happening during his six months' absence from Paris.
"I dare say that's what I feel in the air, then," he said, after a little pause. "It's not calamity; it's love.
"Or maybe," he said, quaintly, "it's both. L'un n'empêche pas I'autre." And he gave an odd little shiver, as if that something in the air had suddenly blown chill upon him.
They were passing the corner of the Chamber of Deputies, which faces the Pont de la Concorde. Ste. Marie pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"Eight-fifteen," said he. "What time are we asked for--eight-thirty? That means nine: It's an English house, and nobody will be on time. It's out of fashion to be prompt nowadays."
"I should hardly call the Marquis de Saulnes English, you know," objected Hartley.
"Well, his wife is," said the other, "and they're altogether English in manner. Dinner won't be before nine. Shall we get out, and walk across the bridge and up the Champs-Elysées? I should like to, I think. I like to walk at this time of the evening--between the daylight and the dark." Hartley nodded a rather reluctant assent, and Ste. Marie prodded the pear-shaped cocher in the back with his stick. So they got down at the approach to the bridge, Ste. Marie gave the cocher a piece of two francs, and they turned away on foot. The pear-shaped one looked at the coin in his fat hand as if it were something unclean and contemptible--something to be despised. He glanced at the dial of his taximeter, which had registered one franc twenty-five, and pulled the flag up. He spat gloomily out into the street, and his purple lips moved in words. He seemed to say something like "Sale diable de métier!" which, considering the fact that he had just been overpaid, appears unwarrantably pessimistic in tone. Thereafter he spat again, picked up his reins