第17章

He had been with Sophy Viner all day, and he was surprised to find how quickly the time had gone.She had hardly attempted, as the hours passed, to conceal her satisfaction on finding that no telegram came from the Farlows."They'll have written," she had simply said; and her mind had at once flown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at the theatre.The intervening hours had been disposed of in a stroll through the lively streets, and a repast, luxuriously lingered over, under the chestnut-boughs of a restaurant in the Champs Elysees.Everything entertained and interested her, and Darrow remarked, with an amused detachment, that she was not insensible to the impression her charms produced.Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in her sense of her prettiness: she seemed simply to be aware of it as a note in the general harmony, and to enjoy sounding the note as a singer enjoys singing.

After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee, she had again asked an immense number of questions and delivered herself of a remarkable variety of opinions.Her questions testified to a wholesome and comprehensive human curiosity, and her comments showed, like her face and her whole attitude, an odd mingling of precocious wisdom and disarming ignorance.

When she talked to him about "life"--the word was often on her lips--she seemed to him like a child playing with a tiger's cub; and he said to himself that some day the child would grow up--and so would the tiger.Meanwhile, such expertness qualified by such candour made it impossible to guess the extent of her personal experience, or to estimate its effect on her character.She might be any one of a dozen definable types, or she might--more disconcertingly to her companion and more perilously to herself--be a shifting and uncrystallized mixture of them all.

Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage.She was eager to learn about every form of dramatic expression which the metropolis of things theatrical had to offer, and her curiosity ranged from the official temples of the art to its less hallowed haunts.Her searching enquiries about a play whose production, on one of the latter scenes, had provoked a considerable amount of scandal, led Darrow to throw out laughingly: "To see THAT you'll have to wait till you're married!" and his answer had sent her off at a tangent.

"Oh, I never mean to marry," she had rejoined in a tone of youthful finality.

"I seem to have heard that before!"

"Yes; from girls who've only got to choose!" Her eyes had grown suddenly almost old."I'd like you to see the only men who've ever wanted to marry me! One was the doctor on the steamer, when I came abroad with the Hokes: he'd been cashiered from the navy for drunkenness.The other was a deaf widower with three grown-up daughters, who kept a clock-shop in Bayswater!--Besides," she rambled on, "I'm not so sure that I believe in marriage.You see I'm all for self-development and the chance to live one's life.I'm awfully modern, you know."It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she struck him as most helplessly backward; yet the moment after, without any bravado, or apparent desire to assume an attitude, she would propound some social axiom which could have been gathered only in the bitter soil of experience.

All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in the theatre and watched her ingenuous absorption.It was on "the story" that her mind was fixed, and in life also, he suspected, it would always be "the story", rather than its remoter imaginative issues, that would hold her.He did not believe there were ever any echoes in her soul...

There was no question, however, that what she felt was felt with intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spread vibrating strings.When the play was over, and they came out once more into the sunlight, Darrow looked down at her with a smile.

"Well?" he asked.

She made no answer.Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing him.Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the loose hair under her hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp rings.She looked like a young priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern.

"You poor child--it's been almost too much for you!"She shook her head with a vague smile.

"Come," he went on, putting his hand on her arm, "let's jump into a taxi and get some air and sunshine.Look, there are hours of daylight left; and see what a night it's going to be!"He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in the misty blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.

She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling out to the driver: "To the Bois!"As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused herself."I must go first to the hotel.There may be a message--at any rate I must decide on something."Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly forced itself upon her."I MUST decide on something,"she repeated.

He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade her to drive directly to the Bois for dinner.It would have been easy enough to remind her that she could not start for Joigny that evening, and that therefore it was of no moment whether she received the Farlows' answer then or a few hours later; but for some reason he hesitated to use this argument, which had come so naturally to him the day before.

After all, he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--so what did it matter if they went there?

The porter, interrogated, was not sure.He himself had received nothing for the lady, but in his absence his subordinate might have sent a letter upstairs.

Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the young man, while she went into her room, unlocked his own door and glanced at the empty table.For him at least no message had come; and on her threshold, a moment later, she met him with the expected: "No--there's nothing!"He feigned an unregretful surprise."So much the better!