arm by a miracle of agility, and the cocher called her the most frightful
names, without turning his head and in a perfunctory tone quite free
from passion.
Young Hartley laughed and turned to look at his companion, but Ste.
Marie sat still in his place, his hat pulled a little down over his brows
and his handsome chin buried in the 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
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