The Call of the Blood | Page 7

Enthoven told her who was going to take her in to dinner, she very nearly begged to be given another partner. She felt that her nature must be in opposition to this man's.
Artois was not eager for the honor of her company. He was a careful dissecter of women, and, therefore, understood how mysterious women are; but in his intimate life they counted for little. He regarded them there rather as the European traveller regards the Mousmés of Japan, as playthings, and insisted on one thing only--that they must be pretty. A Frenchman, despite his unusual intellectual power, he was not wholly emancipated from the la petite femme tradition, which will never be outmoded in Paris while Paris hums with life, and, therefore, when he was informed that he was to take in to dinner the tall, solidly built, big-waisted, rugged-faced woman, whom he had been observing from a distance ever since he came into the drawing-room, he felt that he was being badly treated by his hostess.
Yet he had been observing this woman closely.
Something unusual, something vital in her had drawn his attention, fixed it, held it. He knew that, but said to himself that it was the attention of the novelist that had been grasped by an uncommon human specimen, and that the man of the world, the diner-out, did not want to eat in company with a specimen, but to throw off professional cares with a gay little chatterbox of the Mousmé type. Therefore he came over to be presented to Hermione with rather a bad grace.
And that introduction was the beginning of the great friendship which was now troubling him in the fog.
By the end of that evening Hermione and he had entirely rid themselves of their preconceived notions of each other. She had ceased from imagining him a walking intellect devoid of sympathies, he from considering her a possibly interesting specimen, but not the type of woman who could be agreeable in a man's life. Her naturalness amounted almost to genius. She was generally unable to be anything but natural, unable not to speak as she was feeling, unable to feel unsympathetic. She always showed keen interest when she felt it, and, with transparent sincerity, she at once began to show to Artois how much interested she was in him. By doing so she captivated him at once. He would not, perhaps, have been captivated by the heart without the brains, but the two in combination took possession of him with an ease which, when the evening was over, but only then, caused him some astonishment.
Hermione had a divining-rod to discover the heart in another, and she found out at once that Artois had a big heart as well as a fine intellect. He was deceptive because he was always ready to show the latter, and almost always determined to conceal the former. Even to himself he was not quite frank about his heart, but often strove to minimize its influence upon him, if not to ignore totally its promptings and its utterances. Why this was so he could not perhaps have explained even to himself. It was one of the mysteries of his temperament. From the first moment of their intercourse Hermione showed to him her conviction that he had a warm heart, and that it could be relied upon without hesitation. This piqued but presently delighted, and also soothed Artois, who was accustomed to be misunderstood, and had often thought he liked to be misunderstood, but who now found out how pleasant a brilliant woman's intuition may be, even at a Parisian dinner. Before the evening was over they knew that they were friends; and friends they had remained ever since.
Artois was a reserved man, but, like many reserved people, if once he showed himself as he really was, he could continue to be singularly frank. He was singularly frank with Hermione. She became his confidante, often at a distance. He scarcely ever came to London, which he disliked exceedingly, but from Paris or from the many lands in which he wandered--he was no pavement lounger, although he loved Paris rather as a man may love a very chic cocotte--he wrote to Hermione long letters, into which he put his mind and heart, his aspirations, struggles, failures, triumphs. They were human documents, and contained much of his secret history.
It was of this history that he was now thinking, and of Hermione's comments upon it, tied up with a ribbon in Paris. The news of her approaching marriage with a man whom he had never seen had given him a rude shock, had awakened in him a strange feeling of jealousy. He had grown accustomed to the thought that Hermione was in a certain sense his property. He realized thoroughly the egotism, the dog-in-the-manger