He gave a dubious smile.
“D’you know, dear young lady,” he recommenced after a brief pause, “I should adore to paint a portrait of you laughing. It would be very well hung in the Salon. Your face is so strangely expressive. It is utterly different, in expression, from any other face I ever saw—and I have studied faces.”
Heedless of the general interest which she was arousing, Audrey leaned on the rail of the screen of flowers, and gave herself up afresh to laughter. Monsieur Dauphin was decidedly puzzled. The affair might have ended in hysteria and confusion had not Miss Ingate, with Nick and Tommy, come hurrying up to the dais.
CHAPTER XI
A POLITICAL REFUGEE
“Rosamund has come to my studio and wants to see me at once. She has sent for me. Miss Ingate says she shall go, too.”
It was these words in a highly emotionalised voice from Miss Nickall that, like a vague murmured message of vast events, drew the entire quartet away from the bright inebriated scene created by Monsieur Dauphin.
The single word “Rosamund” sufficed to break one mood and induce another in all bosoms save that of Audrey, who was in a state of permanent joyous exultation that she scarcely even attempted to control. The great militant had a surname, but it was rarely used save by police magistrates. Her Christian name alone was more impressive than the myriad cognomens of queens and princesses. Miss Nickall ran away home at once. Miss Thompkins was left to deliver Miss Ingate and Audrey at Nick’s studio, which, being in the Rue Delambre, was not far away. And not the shedding of the kimono and the re-assumption of European attire could affect Audrey’s spirits. Had she been capable of regret in that hour, she would have regretted the abandonment of the ball, where the refined, spiritual, strange faces of the men, and the enigmatic quality of the women, and the exceeding novelty of the social code had begun to arouse in her sentiments of approval and admiration. But she quitted the staggering frolic without a sigh; for she carried within her a frolic surpassing anything exterior or physical.
The immense flickering boulevard with its double roadway stretched away to the horizon on either hand, empty.