Part 27 (2/2)
”You are laughing. Ah, I know! I should say dissipated.”
”Courtlandt? Come, now, Celeste; does he look dissipated?”
”No-o.”
”He drinks when he chooses, he flirts with a pretty woman when he chooses, he smokes the finest tobacco there is when he chooses; and he gives them all up when he chooses. He is like the seasons; he comes and goes, and n.o.body can change his habits.”
”He has had no affair?”
”Why, Courtlandt hasn't any heart. It's a mechanical device to keep his blood in circulation; that's all. I am the most intimate friend he has, and yet I know no more than you how he lives and where he goes.”
She let her hand fall from his shoulder. She was glad that he did not know.
”But look!” she cried in warning.
Abbott looked.
A woman was coming serenely down the path from the wooded promontory, a woman undeniably handsome in a cedar-tinted linen dress, exquisitely fas.h.i.+oned, with a touch of vivid scarlet on her hat and a most tantalizing flash of scarlet ankle. It was Flora Desimone, fresh from her morning bath and a substantial breakfast. The errand that had brought her from Aix-les-Bains was confessedly a merciful one. But she possessed the dramatist's instinct to prolong a situation. Thus, to make her act of mercy seem infinitely larger than it was, she was determined first to cast the Apple of Discord into this charming corner of Eden. The Apple of Discord, as every man knows, is the only thing a woman can throw with any accuracy.
The artist s.n.a.t.c.hed up his brushes, and ruined the painting forthwith, for all time. The foreground was, in his opinion, beyond redemption; so, with a savage humor, he rapidly limned in a score of impossible trees, turned midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the Chinese New-year in Canton a drab and sober event in comparison. He hated Flora Desimone, as all Nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective and adapted to Nora's moods.
”You have spoiled it!” cried Celeste. She had watched the picture grow, and to see it ruthlessly destroyed this way hurt her. ”How could you!”
”Worst I ever did.” He began to change the whole effect, chuckling audibly as he worked. Sunset divided honors with moonlight. It was no longer incongruous; it was ridiculous. He leaned back and laughed. ”I'm going to send it to L'Asino, and call it an afterthought.”
”Give it to me.”
”What?”
”Yes.”
”Nonsense! I'm going to touch a match to it. I'll give you that picture with the lavender in bloom.”
”I want this.”
”But you can not hang it.”
”I want it.”
”Well!” The more he learned about women the farther out of mental reach they seemed to go. Why on earth did she want this execrable daub? ”You may have it; but all the same, I'm going to call an oculist and have him examine your eyes.”
”Why, it is the Signorina Fournier!”
In preparing studiously to ignore Flora Desimone's presence they had forgotten all about her.
”Good morning, Signora,” said Celeste in Italian.
”And the Signore Abbott, the painter, also!” The Calabrian raised what she considered her most deadly weapon, her lorgnette.
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