“That’s not very polite to you,”
said Longmore, vexed at his lack of superior form
and determined not to be abashed.
“Ah what have I to do with it?” Madame
Clairin brightly wailed. “I’m the
dullest thing here. They’ve not had, other
gentlemen, your success with my sister-in-law.”
“It would have been very easy to have it.
Madame de Mauves is kindness itself.”
She swung open her great fan. “To her own
countrymen!”
Longmore remained silent; he hated the tone of this
conversation.
The speaker looked at him a little and then took in
their hostess, to whom M. de Chalumeau was serving
up another epigram, which the charming creature received
with a droop of the head and eyes that strayed through
the window. “Don’t pretend to tell
me,” Madame Clairin suddenly exhaled, “that
you’re not in love with that pretty woman.”
“Allons donc!” cried Longmore in the most
inspired French he had ever uttered. He rose
the next minute and took a hasty farewell.
He allowed several days to pass without going back;
it was of a sublime suitability to appear to regard
his friend’s frankness during their last interview
as a general invitation. The sacrifice cost him
a great effort, for hopeless passions are exactly
not the most patient; and he had moreover a constant
fear that if, as he believed, deep within the circle
round which he could only hover, the hour of supreme
explanations had come, the magic of her magnanimity
might convert M. de Mauves. Vicious men, it was
abundantly recorded, had been so converted as to be
acceptable to God, and the something divine in this
lady’s composition would sanctify any means
she should choose to employ. Her means, he kept
repeating, were no business of his, and the essence
of his admiration ought to be to allow her to do as
she liked; but he felt as if he should turn away into
a world out of which most of the joy had departed if
she should like, after all, to see nothing more in
his interest in her than might be repaid by mere current
social coin.
When at last he went back he found to his vexation
that he was to run the gauntlet of Madame Clairin’s
officious hospitality. It was one of the first
mornings of perfect summer, and the drawing-room, through
the open windows, was flooded with such a confusion
of odours and bird-notes as might warrant the hope
that Madame de Mauves would renew with him for an
hour or two the exploration of the forest. Her
sister-in-law, however, whose hair was not yet dressed,
emerged like a brassy discord in a maze of melody.
At the same moment the servant returned with his mistress’s
regrets; she begged to be excused, she was indisposed
and unable to see Mr. Longmore. The young man
knew just how disappointed he looked and just what
Madame Clairin thought of it, and this consciousness
determined in him an attitude of almost aggressive
frigidity. This was apparently what she desired.
She wished to throw him off his balance and, if she
was not mistaken, knew exactly how.
