“Your sister is well, I hope?” she asked. “Let me see—it has been two years, almost, since I last saw her.”
“She is quite well, thank you,” answered Selden, who by this time had pulled himself together, and was quite ready to accept a hypothetical sister. “She is to be married next month,” he added, as a slight contribution to the game.
“How interesting! To an American? But of course. Tell me about it!” And then, as the waiter served the coffee and passed on, she moved closer to him and dropped her voice. “I do not wonder that you are astonished! Confess that I am not in the least what you expected!”
“I never expected to be so fortunate,” countered Selden, and permitted himself to appraise her.
There could be no question that she was most unusual—she would be striking anywhere with her coal-black hair, her long pale face, her vivid eyes and lips; striking too in the way she was dressed, without ornament, in a narrow Lanvin gown of black which seemed to be part of her, to be moulded to her as a snake’s skin is moulded. Then, at second glance, Selden saw there was one ornament—a queer stone of greenish-yellow, matching her eyes, catching her gown together across the curve of her breasts. But there were no pearls, no brilliants, not a single ring on her long fingers. Selden wondered if there were also no donor.
She took the coffee that he offered her and leaned back again in her corner. As she sipped it slowly, she looked across at him with level eyes, and Selden realized that she was also appraising him. He had known at once, of course, that he had never seen her before, and her glance seemed to indicate that he was equally unknown to her. A dozen questions sprang to his lips, but he held them back. It was for her to begin. And he was not quite sure of her status. A woman of position, evidently; but as he looked at her he wondered whether the vividness of eyes and lips, the even pallor of the face, owed something—a very tiny something!—to art. If so, it was consummate art, such as one meets nowhere outside of France. As for her age,—but he hesitated even to venture a guess.
“I have wanted to know you for a long time, Mr. Selden,” she said softly at last.
“You honour me!”
“The historian of the war, the interpreter of the peace conference, the champion of the League of Nations, the saviour of Central Europe!” she went on.
Selden stiffened a little, on guard against this irony. There was upon her lips the merest shadow of a smile which might mean anything.