The Arrow of Gold | Page 9

disturbing.
"But she radiated life," continued Mills. "She had plenty of it, and it
had a quality. My cousin and Henry Allegre had a lot to say to each
other and so I was free to talk to her. At the second visit we were like
old friends, which was absurd considering that all the chances were that
we would never meet again in this world or in the next. I am not
meddling with theology but it seems to me that in the Elysian fields
she'll have her place in a very special company."
All this in a sympathetic voice and in his unmoved manner. Blunt
produced another disturbing white flash and muttered:
"I should say mixed." Then louder: "As for instance . . . "
"As for instance Cleopatra," answered Mills quietly. He added after a
pause: "Who was not exactly pretty."
"I should have thought rather a La Valliere," Blunt dropped with an
indifference of which one did not know what to make. He may have
begun to be bored with the subject. But it may have been put on, for the
whole personality was not clearly definable. I, however, was not
indifferent. A woman is always an interesting subject and I was
thoroughly awake to that interest. Mills pondered for a while with a
sort of dispassionate benevolence, at last:
"Yes, Dona Rita as far as I know her is so varied in her simplicity that
even that is possible," he said. "Yes. A romantic resigned La
Valliere . . . who had a big mouth."
I felt moved to make myself heard.

"Did you know La Valliere, too?" I asked impertinently.
Mills only smiled at me. "No. I am not quite so old as that," he said.
"But it's not very difficult to know facts of that kind about a historical
personage. There were some ribald verses made at the time, and Louis
XIV was congratulated on the possession--I really don't remember how
it goes--on the possession of:
". . . de ce bec amoureux Qui d'une oreille a l'autre va, Tra la la.
or something of the sort. It needn't be from ear to ear, but it's a fact that
a big mouth is often a sign of a certain generosity of mind and feeling.
Young man, beware of women with small mouths. Beware of the
others, too, of course; but a small mouth is a fatal sign. Well, the
royalist sympathizers can't charge Dona Rita with any lack of
generosity from what I hear. Why should I judge her? I have known her
for, say, six hours altogether. It was enough to feel the seduction of her
native intelligence and of her splendid physique. And all that was
brought home to me so quickly," he concluded, "because she had what
some Frenchman has called the 'terrible gift of familiarity'."
Blunt had been listening moodily. He nodded assent.
"Yes!" Mills' thoughts were still dwelling in the past. "And when
saying good-bye she could put in an instant an immense distance
between herself and you. A slight stiffening of that perfect figure, a
change of the physiognomy: it was like being dismissed by a person
born in the purple. Even if she did offer you her hand--as she did to
me--it was as if across a broad river. Trick of manner or a bit of truth
peeping out? Perhaps she's really one of those inaccessible beings.
What do you think, Blunt?"
It was a direct question which for some reason (as if my range of
sensitiveness had been increased already) displeased or rather disturbed
me strangely. Blunt seemed not to have heard it. But after a while he
turned to me.
"That thick man," he said in a tone of perfect urbanity, "is as fine as a

needle. All these statements about the seduction and then this final
doubt expressed after only two visits which could not have included
more than six hours altogether and this some three years ago! But it is
Henry Allegre that you should ask this question, Mr. Mills."
"I haven't the secret of raising the dead," answered Mills good
humouredly. "And if I had I would hesitate. It would seem such a
liberty to take with a person one had known so slightly in life."
"And yet Henry Allegre is the only person to ask about her, after all
this uninterrupted companionship of years, ever since he discovered her;
all the time, every breathing moment of it, till, literally, his very last
breath. I don't mean to say she nursed him. He had his confidential man
for that. He couldn't bear women about his person. But then apparently
he couldn't bear this one out of his sight. She's the only woman who
ever sat to him, for he would never suffer a