第294章

"I was thinking that if I am ever rich I shall have more pairs of shoes and stockings and take care of more orphans than anyone else in the world.""A purpose! At last a purpose!" laughed he."Now you will go to work."Through Gourdain she got a French teacher--and her first woman friend.

The young widow he recommended, a Madame Clelie Deliere, was the most attractive woman she had ever known.She had all the best French characteristics--a good heart, a lively mind, was imaginative yet sensible, had good taste in all things.Like most of the attractive French women, she was not beautiful, but had that which is of far greater importance--charm.She knew not a word of English, and it was perhaps Susan's chief incentive toward working hard at French that she could not really be friends with this fascinating person until she learned to speak her language.Palmer--partly by nature, partly through early experience in the polyglot tenement district of New York--had more aptitude for language than had Susan.But he had been lazy about acquiring French in a city where English is spoken almost universally.With the coming of young Madame Deliere to live in the apartment, he became interested.

It was not a month after her coming when you might have seen at one of the fashionable gay restaurants any evening a party of four--Gourdain was the fourth--talking French almost volubly.Palmer's accent was better than Susan's.She could not--and felt she never could--get the accent of the trans-Alleghany region out of her voice--and so long as that remained she would not speak good French."But don't let that trouble you," said Clelie."Your voice is your greatest charm.It is so honest and so human.Of the Americans I have met, I have liked only those with that same tone in their voices.""But __I__ haven't that accent," said Freddie with raillery.

Madame Clelie laughed."No--and I do not like you," retorted she."No one ever did.You do not wish to be liked.You wish to be feared." Her lively brown eyes sparkled and the big white teeth in her generous mouth glistened."You wish to be feared--and you _are_ feared, Monsieur Freddie.""It takes a clever woman to know how to flatter with the truth," said he."Everybody always has been afraid of me--and is--except, of course, my wife."He was always talking of "my wife" now.The subject so completely possessed his mind that he aired it unconsciously.

When she was not around he boasted of "my wife's" skill in the art of dress, of "my wife's" taste, of "my wife's" shrewdness in getting her money's worth.When she was there, he was using the favorite phrase "my wife" this--"my wife" that--"my wife" the other--until it so got on her nerves that she began to wait for it and to wince whenever it came--never a wait of many minutes.At first she thought he was doing this deliberately either to annoy her or in pursuance of some secret deep design.But she soon saw that he was not aware of his inability to keep off the subject or of his obsession for that phrase representing the thing he was intensely wishing and willing--"chiefly," she thought, "because it is something he cannot have." She was amazed at his display of such a weakness.It gave her the chance to learn an important truth about human nature--that self-indulgence soon destroys the strongest nature--and she was witness to how rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an impossibility.When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful self-indulgence, hurls himself at an obstruction, either the obstruction yields or the man is destroyed.

One morning early in February, as she was descending from her auto in front of the apartment house, she saw Brent in the doorway.Never had he looked so young or so well.His color was fine, his face had become almost boyish; upon his skin and in his eyes was that gloss of perfect health which until these latter days of scientific hygiene was rarely seen after twenty-five in a woman or after thirty in a man.She gathered in all, to the smallest detail--such as the color of his shirt--with a single quick glance.She knew that he had seen her before she saw him--that he had been observing her.Her happiest friendliest smile made her small face bewitching as she advanced with outstretched hand.

"When did you come?" she asked.

"About an hour ago."

"From the Riviera?"

"No, indeed.From St.Moritz--and skating and skiing and tobogganing.I rather hoped I looked it.Doing those things in that air--it's being born again.""I felt well till I saw you," said she."Now I feel dingy and half sick."He laughed, his glance sweeping her from hat to boots.

Certainly his eyes could not have found a more entrancing sight.She was wearing a beautiful dress of golden brown cloth, sable hat, short coat and muff, brown suede boots laced high upon her long slender calves.And when she had descended from the perfect little limousine made to order for her, he had seen a ravishing flutter of lingerie of pale violet silk.

The sharp air had brought no color to her cheeks to interfere with the abrupt and fascinating contrast of their pallor with the long crimson bow of her mouth.But her skin seemed transparent and had the clearness of health itself.Everything about her, every least detail, was of Parisian perfection.

"Probably there are not in the world," said he, "so many as a dozen women so well put together as you are.No, not half a dozen.Few women carry the art of dress to the point of genius.""I see they had only frumps at St.Moritz this season,"laughed she.

But he would not be turned aside."Most of the well dressed women stop short with being simply frivolous in spending so much time at less than perfection--like the army of poets who write pretty good verse, or the swarm of singers who sing pretty well.I've heard of you many times this winter.You are the talk of Paris."She laughed with frank delight.It was indeed a pleasure to discover that her pains had not been in vain.