“Gerard was right,” he said to himself. “We go out and fight, we get ourselves killed and mutilated, so that such fellows may make money and keep it up all night in the Bars. The Profiteers! We who are about to die salute you!”
Thus he apostrophised the man who had taken Marguerite Lambert away from him, raging furiously. The old prudent Paul Ravenel counting his steps and avoiding emotions, had for the moment quite disappeared. He was a boy of nineteen, ardent and unreasonable, and a little ridiculous in the magniloquence of his thoughts. The only comfort he drew was from an aloofness in Marguerite of which she had shown nothing whilst she sat with him, but which was now very evident. She did not speak whilst she danced, her eyelids were lowered, her face had lost all its expression. Paul had a fancy that she had just left her body to revolve and glide delicately in the dance, whilst her spirit had withdrawn itself into some untarnished home of its own. The piano suddenly was dumb; the dancers stopped: Marguerite and her partner were standing face to face in front of the doorway. Paul had promised not to interfere. Very well then, he would go. He rose abruptly to his feet, his eyes fixed upon the couple; and at once, though Marguerite never looked his way, she moved sharply. It was a quick little start, hardly perceptible. Paul felt a wave of joy sweep over him. She was conscious of him, as he was conscious of her, so that if he moved abruptly she at a distance was startled. He turned with a smile upon his lips, but after all he did not go, as he had intended to do. For Henriette came out of the Bar towards him.
“Won’t you stay for a minute,” she said, “and give me something to drink! I am dying of thirst!”
“Of course,” he said, and he called to the waiter. He had a great goodwill towards all women that night, but above all to the women of the Villa Iris.
CHAPTER VIII
Henriette Explains
Paul was rewarded out of all measure for his courtesy. For as Henriette sat and drank her whiskey and soda, she talked.
“You were civil to me when your friend would have sent me contemptuously away,” she said. “And when I told you that I had dined at the Café de Paris only three weeks ago, and your friend laughed, you did not. You pretended that you believed it. That was polite of you. For we both knew that never once in all my life have I dined at the Café de Paris or any such swell restaurant in Paris. And it was kind of you. It made me ready to fancy that I had dined there and that does one a little good, eh? One feels better in one’s self. So I will be kind in my turn. You are interested in that little one,” and she jerked her head towards the table in the Bar, where Marguerite had rejoined the noisy group. “Yes, she has chic, and she is pretty on her feet, and she has a personality, but—” Paul Ravenel leaned forward, his face hardening.
“Mademoiselle, I do not want to hear.”
“Oh, I am not going to crab her,” replied Henriette, and her petulant temper flamed up. “You think, I suppose, that women cannot admire a girl who is younger and prettier than themselves and cannot like her. That is foolish. I tell you we all like Marguerite Lambert. And I speak to you for your good and hers. But, of course, if you do not care to hear me—”