Part 18 (1/2)
”I find,” confessed the Lady in English, ”that they are not so good below as they seemed on the top. You will not object?”
Oh, no: Cartaret wouldn't object.
”I suppose,” said Mlle. Urola, ”that I should reprimand her, for their quality is”--she frowned at the berries--”inferior; but I have not the heart. Not for the whole world could I hurt her feelings. She is both so kind and so proud, and she is such a marvel of economy. You, sir, would not guess how well she makes me fare upon how small an expense.”
After breakfast, she showed him some examples of her work. It had delicacy and feeling. An unprejudiced critic would have said that she had much to learn in the way of technique, but to Cartaret every one of her sketches was a marvel.
”This,” she said, again in English, as she produced a drawing from the bottom of her bundle, ”does not compare with what you did, sir, but it is not the work of a flatterer, since it is my own work. It is I.”
It was a rapid sketch of herself and it was, as she had said, the work of no flatterer.
”I like that least of all,” declared Cartaret, in the language to which she had returned; but he wanted her to forget those portraits he had made. He caught, consequently, at trifles. ”Why don't you say 'It's me'?” he asked.
She clasped her hands behind her and stood looking up at him with her chin tilted and her unconscious lips close to his.
”I say what is right, sir,” she challenged.
He laughed, but shook his head.
”I know better,” said he.
”No,” she said. She was smiling, but serious. ”It is I that am right.
And even if I learned that I were wrong, I would now not change. It would be a surrender to you.”
Cartaret found his color high. His mind was putting into her words a meaning he was afraid she might see that he put there.
”Not to me,” he said.
”Yes, yes, to you!”
Surrender! What a troublesome word she was using!
The chin went higher; the lips came nearer.
”A complete surrender, sir.” Quickly she stepped back. If she had read his face rightly, her face gave no hint of it, but she was at once her former self. ”And that I will never do,” she said, reverting to French.
It was Cartaret's turn to want to change the subject. He did it awkwardly.
”Have you been in the Bois?” he asked.
No, she had not been in the Bois. She loved nature too well to care for artificial scenery.
”But the Bois is the sort of art that improves on nature,” he protested; ”at least, so the Parisian will tell you; and, really, it is beautiful now. You ought to see it. I was there last night.”
”You go alone into the Bois in the night? Is not that dangerous?”
He could not tell whether she was mocking him. He said: