“O, no! I may have been deceived by the light; but I should never have thought for a moment of connecting them—not for a moment; unless, possibly, their figures might be something alike. But Josephine for one thing was fair—I don’t mean a blonde, but with hair of the neutral sort and palish eyelashes. No, really, I can’t understand it.”
There was no compromise about her. I felt the excitement in my heart as if beating on towards some emotional crisis, but whether fateful for loss or gain I could not foresee.
“O, well!” I said. “It is always a vexed question, that of likenesses. Some people can discover them where for others they simply don’t exist. Haven’t you ever known an infant that to this person was the image of its mother, to that of its father, while bearing to neither the least suggestion of the other parent? I daresay, if I could see Mademoiselle Beaurepaire, I should be as puzzled as you are to find a resemblance. Are you staying here long?”
“Only over to-morrow. We go on to Nîmes the day after. Mr. Dane—” she cooed honeyly—“I suppose you couldn’t—I suppose it wouldn’t be possible for you to—to sacrifice a little of your spare time to two poor outcast fellow-countrywomen? It would be so delightful to have you for a cicerone—if you could.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “You will understand me, I am sure, when I say that I am at the mercy of a more exacting will than my own.”
I could not, indeed, give any definite answer at the moment—my thoughts were chaos, with still an instinctive dread in them of that introduction the prospect of which had at first dismayed me. On the other hand I recognised in this chance encounter a means to a certain end of unsentimentalising detachment. And more than that—I was really pleased to have run across this young compatriot of mine again; she carried with her a frank deodorising atmosphere which it was pleasant to breathe after the rather close and thunderous experiences of the last few days. I found myself looking at her very kindly: she was not exactly pretty, but as fresh and wholesome as the primroses of her own countryside; and breathing her, as it were, I seemed to feel, wistfully and faintly, a sense of the long exile which, though voluntarily, had severed me from my birthright. England, after all, smells very sweet across the seas.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Brooking. “She won’t want to be deprived of you for the sake of two strangers.”
But Clarice persisted: “Why shouldn’t she make one of us?”
“I will ask her,” I said. “Don’t think me a boor if I leave it at that. And that reminds me: I must go and look after the young lady, and see that she isn’t getting into any mischief—” and we parted with a cordial good-night, and I went my gait.
With what intention; and whom to seek? I felt in a very queer state of mind—cynical, puzzled, wrathful, and yet oddly elevated. What should I do—what say? Nothing, I resolved, after I had thought it all well out; but just let things take their course. In masterly inactivity lay the solution of most problems of conduct.