Part 50 (2/2)

”And you mean you've never been enlightened? You make yourself out very good.”

”That's better than making one's self out very bad, as you do.”

”Ah,” she explained, ”you don't know the consequences of a false position.”

I was amused at her great formula. ”What do you mean by yours being one?”

”Oh I mean everything. For instance, I've to pretend to be a jeune fille. I'm not a jeune fille; no American girl's a jeune fille; an American girl's an intelligent responsible creature. I've to pretend to be idiotically innocent, but I'm not in the least innocent.”

This, however, was easy to meet. ”You don't in the least pretend to be innocent; you pretend to be-what shall I call it?-uncannily wise.”

”That's no pretence. I _am_ uncannily wise. You could call it nothing more true.”

I went along with her a little, rather thrilled by this finer freedom.

”You're essentially not an American girl.”

She almost stopped, looking at me; there came a flush to her cheek.

”Voila!” she said. ”There's my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I've been hideously deprived of that immense convenience, that beautiful resource.”

”Do you want me to tell you?” I pursued with interest. ”It would be utterly impossible to an American girl-I mean unperverted, and that's the whole point-to talk as you're talking to me now.”

The expressive eagerness she showed for this was charming. ”Please tell me then! How would she talk?”

”I can't tell you all the things she'd say, but I think I can tell you most of the things she wouldn't. She wouldn't reason out her conduct as you seem to me to do.”

Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. ”I see. She would be simpler. To do very simply things not at all simple-that's the American girl!”

I greatly enjoyed our intellectual relation. ”I don't know whether you're a French girl, or what you are, but, you know, I find you witty.”

”Ah, you mean I strike false notes!” she quite comically wailed. ”See how my whole sense for such things has been ruined. False notes are just what I want to avoid. I wish you'd always tell me.”

The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not borne fruit. Miss Ruck suddenly turned round to us with a question. ”Don't you want some ice-cream?”

”_She_ doesn't strike false notes,” I declared.

We had come into view of a manner of pavilion or large kiosk, which served as a cafe and at which the delicacies generally procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next Aurora; our companions were on the other side of the table.

My neighbour rejoiced to extravagance in our situation. ”This is best of all-I never believed I should come to a cafe with two strange and possibly depraved men! Now you can't persuade me this isn't wrong.”

”To make it wrong,” I returned, ”we ought to see your mother coming down that path.”

”Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” she cried, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before. ”You must promise to tell me-to warn me in some way-whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that-ahem!”

”You'll keep me very busy and people will think I'm in a consumption.”

”Voyons,” she continued, ”why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven't you been 'attentive'? That's what American girls call it; that's what Miss Ruck calls it.”

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