Part 39 (1/2)

Not even to know enough to pick out the right school!”

And then a curious expression of suspicion coming into her eyes, she said skeptically, ”but _you_ go to that school! If it's good enough for you...!”

Here again was something in that baffling other dimension, and this time though she understood it as little as ever, Marise did not like it at all. She said stiffly, ”I'm going because you can get serious instruction in some things I need to enter the cla.s.ses at the Sorbonne next year.”

Eugenia sprang at her, remorsefully crying, ”I won't again. I don't know what made me.” She kissed her once more, rubbing her cheek against the other's shoulder.

Her bewildering alternations of mood, the reckless way in which she threw herself on Marise to embrace her; and the way, very startling to a girl brought up in France, in which Eugenia kissed her on the mouth like a lover, were very exciting to Marise. Not since Jeanne's big double kisses had she been so fondled and caressed, and never had she been kissed on the lips before. That was something closely a.s.sociated in her mind with secrecy and pa.s.sion. It made her feel very queer; partly stand-offish and startled, partly moved and responsive--altogether shaken up, more alive, but apprehensively uncertain of what was coming next.

”And what _is_ the Sorbonne?”

”It's the University,” Marise explained, ”I was half-way through a woman's college in America, when we came abroad again. So I wanted to go on and study some more here although I have to work so many hours a day on my music that I can't ever hope to have a degree.”

”College? University?” Eugenia was horrified. ”Mercy! What makes you want to do that? And music lessons, too. I should think you'd be working every minute.”

”I do,” said Marise.

”Just study, study, study, and practise, practise, practise?” asked the other, astonished.

”Mostly,” said Marise.

”Why, that's _turrible_!” cried Eugenia, beginning to look alarmed.

”That's the way everybody does over here,” said Marise.

”They _do_!” cried Eugenia, aghast and astounded. ”Why, I thought they....”

Marise corrected herself, ”Oh, of course not. What am I talking about? I mean the kind of folks I know. There are millions of others, I suppose, yes, of course, all the rue de la Paix clientele, who don't work at all.”

Eugenia was relieved at this, and relapsed for a moment into silence, which she finally broke by asking, ”Well, wheah _would_ you go to school, if you were me?”

Marise had been thinking of this, and was ready, ”There's a very grand private school, I've heard about out at Auteuil, in what was somebody's country estate, when Auteuil was the country, with a chateau and a park.

It's fearfully expensive and so it must be very chic. The girls never go out by themselves, always have a maid, or a teacher with them; the old ideas, aristocratic, you know, that ordinary French people don't hold to any more. Mrs. Marbury could tell you all about it.”

”Who?... Mrs. Mahbury?”

”Oh, she's an American, who's always lived over here, in the American colony. Her husband and my father are in the same sort of business. We know her. She'd be _sure_ to know what was chic.”

”Well, I'll go to that school,” announced Eugenia. ”I just _knew_ there'd be a place like that, if I could only find out wheah. I bet you I won't have to study French history _theah_.”

Marise laughed, ”You'll probably have to work like a dog, for the teacher who teaches _la tenue_.”

”What's that?”

”Oh, all I know about it is what the dancing teacher used to make us do in the convent-school I went to in Bayonne; walk into a room, pretend to greet somebody, step into a make-believe carriage and out of it, sit down with him for a talk; and first he'd pretend to be a girl like you, and then he'd pretend to be an older woman, and then he'd pretend to be a man (only of course he really was that), and you'd have to have the right manner for each one.... All that kind of foolishness, you know.”

”No, I don't know!” cried Eugenia angrily.

The cab drew up and stopped. ”I suppose we're theah,” said Eugenia, ”you tell him to wait till we come out.”

She was cautiously silent during the introduction to Mme. de la Cueva, and during the hour of the lesson. But if she gave her tongue little employment, she kept her eyes busy, absorbing every detail of the long, bare room, with its four long windows opening on a balcony overlooking the little, dank, unkempt Jardin de Cluny. After the lesson, Mme. de la Cueva stepped into another room to get some music, and Marise, rather pale with fatigue, walked wearily out on the balcony for a breath of fresh air. Eugenia sprang to follow her, as if she had been wis.h.i.+ng to do this, and had not known if it were allowable. But before she looked down on the medieval building below them she said in a whisper to Marise, ”You're dog-tired. Why, I wouldn't work that hard for _any_body!