Jason | Page 3

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 and jerked them, saying:
"Hè, Jean Baptiste! Uip, uip!" The unemotional white horse turned up
the boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little
bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that the
white horse was probably unique. I doubt that there was another horse
in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.
But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la
Concorde. They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss
Helen Benham, and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what.
His gloom was unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said
about feeling calamity in the air. It was very unlike him to have nothing
to say. Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the
river, and the other man halted beside him. The dusk was thickening
almost perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark. The swift river ran
leaden beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles,
darted silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for
the day. Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was
still faintly washed with color, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin
green. A single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a
lifeless old rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk
hangings of a woman's boudoir. And black against this pallid wash of
colors the tour Eiffel stood high and slender and rather ghostly. By day
it is an ugly thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man's vanity
against God's serene sky; but the haze of evening drapes it in a merciful
semi-obscurity and it is beautiful.
Ste. Marie leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before
him and eyes afar. He began to sing, à demi-voix, a little phrase out of
_Louise_--an invocation to Paris--and the Englishman stirred uneasily
beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat
and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back
and forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried
to imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at
half-past eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the

thought. It was not done at all, he said to himself. He looked a little
nervously at the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that
they stared at him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth
they did nothing of the sort. He turned back and touched his friend on
the arm, saying:
"I think we'd best be getting along, you know." But Ste. Marie was very
far away, and did not hear. So then he fell to watching the man's dark
and handsome face, and to thinking how little the years at Eton and the
year or two at Oxford had set any real stamp upon him. He would never
be anything but Latin, in spite of his Irish mother and his public school.
Hartley thought what a pity that was. As Englishmen go, he was not
illiberal, but, no more than he could have altered the color of his eyes,
could he have believed that anything foreign would not be improved by
becoming English. That was born in him, as it is born in most
Englishmen, and it was a perfectly simple and honest belief. He felt a
deeper affection for this handsome and volatile young man whom all
women loved, and who bade fair to spend his life at their successive
feet--for he certainly had never shown the slightest desire to take up
any sterner employment--he felt a deeper affection for Ste. Marie than
for any other man he knew, but he had always wished that Ste. Marie
were an Englishman, and he had always felt a slight sense of shame
over his friend's un-English ways.
After a moment he touched him again on the arm, saying:
"Come along! We shall be late, you know. You can finish your little
concert another time."
"Eh!" cried Ste. Marie. "Quoi, donc?" He turned with a start.
"Oh yes!" said he. "Yes, come along! I was mooning. Allons! Allons,
my old!" He took Hartley's arm and