On her return from America, with the reputation of added wealth, she found herself invited everywhere. Everyone wondered that she did not marry, for she was a young woman whom men admired apart from her money and accomplishments. But although she went out a great deal, and was usually surrounded by a little court of struggling tenors and impecunious titles, she seemed unmoved by all the attention she received, and apparently was not even greatly amused.
The truth was, Katherine Cameron, being a clever girl, had seen through the artificiality of it all, and still could not bear to give up the illusion she had cherished all her life, that she should find her real sphere in the society she would meet in Paris; it might be among her own country people, but they would be broadened by travel and study until all desirable and agreeable qualities would be blended into a harmonious whole.
When she decided to pass the winter with her aunt, Mrs. Montgomery, it was with the sweet hope that she should be able to realise her dreams of a little “Salon”—a revival of that delightful French institution and formulated on the same lines, but having American cleverness and adaptability added to it. It seemed feasible. Mrs. Montgomery had lived in Paris for years, and she knew all the resident society people, the rest of the “floating population” were usually provided with letters of introduction to her. Her “Tuesdays At Home” were delightful functions. Katherine Cameron had great respect for her aunt’s discrimination, which often seemed prophetic, and caused uninitiated people to wonder how Mrs. Montgomery happened to have “taken up” some artist or singer who afterwards became famous.
Still Katherine was not entirely satisfied. Men liked her, but thought her cold; at any rate, she never fulfilled any promise of a flirtation that her agreeable manners might suggest. Women said she was ambitious, that she would only marry some distinguished foreigner, and yet Miss Cameron, who sometimes used forcible expressions, had been heard to say, “She would marry a ‘Hottentot’ if she loved him.” She was honestly trying to get some good out of her surroundings, and was perfectly willing to fall in love, or to gratify her intellectual tastes, just as it might happen. Up to this time, however, she had been distinctly heart-whole, and aside from an occasional charming man or woman whom she met in society, or the interesting art students whom she knew (and liked best of all), it seemed to her clear and practical mind that there was a great deal of “padding,” as she expressed it.
She resented, as a patriotic American woman of culture and refinement, that the so-called “exclusive” circles in the American quarter accepted some of the families who would not occupy conspicuous positions in their own free and enlightened country. She could not help comparing certain wealthy young society women with a clever but poor friend of hers, whose artistic talent had been recognized by her own warm-hearted Southern townspeople, who had contributed a sufficient sum to send Miss Paterson abroad, confident that her brush would one day repay them. The two young women had met at the studio of a common friend, and Miss Cameron, who professed to know nothing of art, had asked such intelligent questions of the young student that Miss Paterson, with a woman’s quick intuition, had surmised that her fashionable countrywoman had a more artistic nature than she admitted. A friendship was begun, and Katherine Cameron became the confidante and admirer of the rising young artist.
Just now she has returned from a musicale at the hotel of one of the famous teachers, and she is describing it to Miss Paterson, who has come in for a chat and a quiet cup of tea.
“It makes me so indignant,” she is saying, “when I think what an impression we must make on intelligent French people. Why this afternoon, at Madame de la Harpe’s, it was simply one medley of disputing mothers and jealous pupils. Madame herself is so distinctly a lady, that when two irate mothers appealed to her as to which of their daughters should sing first, she shrugged her shoulders in true French fashion and said, ‘They will both sing many times; they will sing so well that it will be doubtless required’—a diplomatic answer! She knew her audience, and felt that a programme of twenty-three numbers could not admit of many encores in one afternoon. I noticed she did not deviate from the original plan. Then that vulgar Mrs. Booth, from somewhere out west, who has the gorgeous apartment, and the family of extremely pretty daughters, asked me if I would join their French class. ‘We have an actor, M. de Valle, to teach us,’ she said, ‘he is just splendid—so handsome and so polite; only he will make us congregate verbs.’ To my horror, Mr. Vincent, of the English Embassy, who is so coldly critical of everything American, overheard her, and I saw him trying to suppress a smile, which made me indignant, so I impulsively replied, ‘I shall be charmed, Mrs. Booth—so kind of you to ask me.’ And now I shall have to extricate myself from that situation, for, although I have a certain appreciation of the ludicrous, I cannot sacrifice one night of every week, even to show Mr. Vincent that I despise his criticism.”
“But I have rather thought Mr. Vincent one of your admirers,” Miss Paterson returns.
“Admirer? He sees in me a young person who will not be apt to make any very ridiculous blunders, and as he has to appear occasionally, being in the diplomatic service, he talks to me as a sort of compromise between the tourist element and his own fixed aristocracy. I love to shock him. Why, to-day, he said, in that deliberate tone he employs when he wishes to be particularly patronizing, ‘I suppose you go in for all sorts of things, Miss Cameron. I hear you are artistic, and know the Latin Quarter better than this side of the river. When do you get it all in?’ I told him to behold a young person positively unique in Paris—one who was actively pursuing nothing. And then he actually remarked that ‘in an age where all the young women were running mad with fads it was refreshing to find one so confessedly idle.’ He aggravates me so that I always lose my head, and get the worst of the argument. But here I am talking away, and forgetting that I am to hear all about you and your plans.”
Miss Cameron soon proved that she could listen as well as talk, for she was most attentive while Miss Paterson told her about a letter which she had received that day, and which had disturbed her not a little. In the midst of their displeasure both girls saw the ludicrous side of it, for it was nothing less than a letter from Miss Paterson’s townspeople forbidding her marriage to the penniless young sculptor with whom she had fallen in love.