The Red Lily | Page 9

she defended her conduct as
innocent and natural.
Having done harm to no one, she had no regrets. She was content. She
was in love, she was loved. Doubtless she had not felt the intoxication
she had expected, but does one ever feel it? She was the friend of the
good and honest fellow, much liked by women who passed for
disdainful and hard to please, and he had a true affection for her. The
pleasure she gave him and the joy of being beautiful for him attached
her to this friend. He made life for her not continually delightful, but
easy to bear, and at times agreeable.
That which she had not divined in her solitude, notwithstanding vague
yearnings and apparently causeless sadness, he had revealed to her. She
knew herself when she knew him. It was a happy astonishment. Their
sympathies were not in their minds. Her inclination toward him was
simple and frank, and at this moment she found pleasure in the idea of
meeting him the next day in the little apartment where they had met for
three years. With a shake of the head and a shrug of her shoulders,
coarser than one would have expected from this exquisite woman,
sitting alone by the dying fire, she said to herself: "There! I need love!"
CHAPTER II

"ONE CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE YOUNG!"
It was no longer daylight when they came out of the little apartment in
the Rue Spontini. Robert Le Menil made a sign to a coachman, and
entered the carriage with Therese. Close together, they rolled among
the vague shadows, cut by sudden lights, through the ghostly city,
having in their minds only sweet and vanishing impressions while
everything around them seemed confused and fleeting.
The carriage approached the Pont-Neuf. They stepped out. A dry cold
made vivid the sombre January weather. Under her veil Therese
joyfully inhaled the wind which swept on the hardened soil a dust white
as salt. She was glad to wander freely among unknown things. She
liked to see the stony landscape which the clearness of the air made
distinct; to walk quickly and firmly on the quay where the trees
displayed the black tracery of their branches on the horizon reddened
by the smoke of the city; to look at the Seine. In the sky the first stars
appeared.
"One would think that the wind would put them out," she said.
He observed, too, that they scintillated a great deal. He did not think it
was a sign of rain, as the peasants believe. He had observed, on the
contrary, that nine times in ten the scintillation of stars was an augury
of fine weather.
Near the little bridge they found old iron-shops lighted by smoky lamps.
She ran into them. She turned a corner and went into a shop in which
queer stuffs were hanging. Behind the dirty panes a lighted candle
showed pots, porcelain vases, a clarinet, and a bride's wreath.
He did not understand what pleasure she found in her search.
"These shops are full of vermin. What can you find interesting in
them?"
"Everything. I think of the poor bride whose wreath is under that globe.
The dinner occurred at Maillot. There was a policeman in the

procession. There is one in almost all the bridal processions one sees in
the park on Saturdays. Don't they move you, my friend, all these poor,
ridiculous, miserable beings who contribute to the grandeur of the
past?"
Among cups decorated with flowers she discovered a little knife, the
ivory handle of which represented a tall, thin woman with her hair
arranged a la Maintenon. She bought it for a few sous. It pleased her,
because she already had a fork like it. Le Menil confessed that he had
no taste for such things, but said that his aunt knew a great deal about
them. At Caen all the merchants knew her. She had restored and
furnished her house in proper style. This house was noted as early as
1690. In one of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had
wished to put them in order. She had found frivolous books in them,
ornamented with engravings so unconventional that she had burned
them.
"Is she silly, your aunt?" asked Therese.
For a long time his anecdotes about his aunt had made her impatient.
Her friend had in the country a mother, sisters, aunts, and numerous
relatives whom she did not know and who irritated her. He talked of
them with admiration. It annoyed her that he often visited them. When
he came back, she imagined that he carried with him the odor of things
that had been packed up for years. He was astonished, naively, and he
suffered from her antipathy to them.
He