Part 40 (1/2)

”A what? What's a Levantine?”

Marise considered, ”What _is_ a Levantine, anyhow? A little of everything, I should say, and all more or less oriental and southern.

She's part Spanish, part Jewish from Asia Minor, brought up in Cairo and Paris.”

Eugenia sheered off on another tack, ”And who is Madame Va... Va...

something?”

”Madame Vallery? She's a ... she's a sort of friend of mine. Yes, she's a friend. My old music-teacher, when I was a little girl, got us together. She's the wife of a Deputy, you know, like our Congressmen.”

”Is she chic, too,” asked Eugenia, ”like Mrs. Marbury? Is she young? Is she pretty?”

Marise laughed, ”No, she's not pretty or young. She must be fifty years old.”

Eugenia was shocked. ”And a friend of _youah's_!”

Marise explained, ”She has more brains than you and I and forty other girls rolled into one. And I've met more interesting people at her house than....”

”Will you take me sometime--will you take me?” asked Eugenia.

”Yes, if you like,” said Marise.

Eugenia looked around her wildly, as if to find some way of saying her thanks. Something in the street caught her eye. They were pa.s.sing a florist's shop. She slammed the door open, curved her flexible little body around the frame, and caught at the driver's coat-tails. ”Stop a minute!” she cried to him and dashed into the shop. When she came out she had a huge bunch of mauve-colored orchids in her arms.

”For you, for you,” she cried, elated at her idea, thrusting them into Marise's hands, and kissing her again. And then, suddenly downcast, ”Oh, it oughtn't to have been orchids! What? Roses? Lilies? Violets?... Yes, violets.”

This time Marise protested energetically against this a.s.sumption of meanings in her face.

”I don't know what makes you _say_ such things,” she cried out helplessly, half-angrily. ”Orchids are lovely--_beautiful_. How could anything be better? I never had any before in my life.”

But the other was not to be comforted. ”Yes, it ought to have been violets,” she murmured, and then squaring her jaw, ”And it _will_ be violets, the next time. You just see!”

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

May, 1906.

As Marise started up the front stairway she saw Biron emerging on the run from the foot of the servants' stairway, his ap.r.o.n half-off, a net marketing-bag in his hand. His broad, red face looked cross and anxious.

Something must have gone wrong. She turned back, meeting him in front of the concierge's door.

”Oh, Mademoiselle, G.o.d be praised you're back in time. Desolation and ruin! The sole has turned--it has been so hot to-day. I swear on my soul as a Christian it was fresh when I got it--unless that blackguard Gagnan changed....”

When Biron turned his torrent of objurgation on the tradespeople who sold him eatables there was no stopping him. Marise cut in now.

”Were you going out for another? Do you want me to go?”

”Yes, yes--only not for a sole--there wouldn't be one left--and the dinner was _planned_ for sole!”