All of which brings me to the ungallant confession that the two ladies, who had occupied so much of an idle man’s thoughts at Mentone, occupied considerably less of a busy man’s at Paris. They were not forgotten, but they receded into the background of my thoughts, emerging to the forefront only in rare moments of leisure; even then my mental attitude was one of greater detachment. I had a cold fit about the situation, and some ungracious reflections for both of them. Absence and preoccupation blunted my imagination, even when they did not entirely divert my thoughts. My mind was localized; it did not travel far or for long outside my daily business.
It was when our deliberations had almost reached a conclusion, as the official report put it—when our agreement had gone to the secretaries to be drafted in proper form—that I got a telegram from Godfrey Frost, telling me that he would be in Paris the next day and asking me to dine with him. Putting off some minor engagement which I had, I accepted his invitation.
It was not till after dinner, when we were alone in his sitting room at the hotel, that he opened to me what he had to say. He did it in a methodical, deliberate way. “I’ve something to say to you. Sit down there, and light a cigar, Julius.”
I obeyed him. Evidently I was in for a story—of what sort I did not know. But his mouth wore its resolute look, not the smile with which he had chaffed me after our meeting with Arsenio Valdez at Monte Carlo.
“The system worked,” he began abruptly.
“You won?” I asked, astonished.
“I don’t want you to interrupt for a little while, if you don’t mind. Of course, I didn’t win; I never supposed I should. But the system worked. I found Madame Valdez. Be quiet! After two nights of the system, I politely—more or less politely—intimated that I was sick of it; also that I didn’t see my way to finance any further the peculiarly idiotic game which he played on his own account, in the intervals of superintending the system. The man’s mad to think that he’s got a dog’s chance, playing like that! He’d stayed with me in Monte those two days. I said that I was afraid his wife would never forgive me if I kept him from her any longer. He said that, having for the moment lost la veine, he was not in a position to return my hospitality; otherwise he and his wife would have been delighted to see me at Nice. Well, with the usual polite circumlocutions, he conveyed to me that there was a pleasant, quiet little hotel in Nice where he generally stayed—when he was in funds, he meant, I suppose—and that, although Madame Valdez was not staying there at present, she might be prevailed upon to join him there, and certainly we should make a pleasant party. ‘I am le bienvenu at a very cozy little place in Nice, if we want an hour’s distraction in the evening. My wife goes to bed early. She’s a woman with her own profession, and it takes her out early in the morning.’ So that seemed all right, only—you can guess! I smoothed over the difficulty. At that little hotel, at dinner on the next Sunday, I, Valdez’s welcome guest, had the privilege of being presented to Madame Valdez—or, as he called her, Donna Lucinda.”
“Yes, the system worked, Godfrey,” I observed.
He did not rebuke my interruption, but he took no heed of it. His own story held him in its grip, whatever effect it might be having on his auditor.
“She came just as if she were an invited guest, and rather a shy one at that; a timid handshake for Valdez, a distant, shy bow for me. He greeted her as he might have a girl he was courting, but who would generally have nothing to do with him—who had condescended just this once, you know. Only she said to him—rather bashfully—‘Do you like the frock I bought, Arsenio?’ It was a pretty little frock—a brightish blue. Quite inexpensive material, I should say, but very nicely put together; and it suited her eyes and hair. What eyes and hair she has, by Jove, Julius!”