“Richard would never forgive me if I dragged him to a police-court,” she said, and her thoughts went back to her father. “Strange how blind I was, thinking that he needed me when he welcomed my going. But, who knows? he may be missing me now.” She turned back when she had reached St. Cloud and retraced her footsteps easily; in less than an hour she had reached the Pont Royal.
“I have done something that no respectable girl should do,” she said as she went up to her room. “I have run the risk of being spoken to in the street. Apparently I am not attractive enough to be in any danger from the vicious,” she added as she looked in the glass, but she was pleased with what she saw there and fell asleep at once.
There was a letter from Richard waiting for her asking her to luncheon the following day, and when the time came Anne was overjoyed to see a familiar face once more, though she had been repeating to herself the words she had spoken by the river.
The door of the studio was opened by Ginette, who held out a cool hand. As the girl turned to lead her in, Anne looked at the dark head with the short black hairs cropped close to the brown neck and such envy filled her at the sight that she nearly burst into tears. To be cool and dark and brown, to live in a studio with two men, to talk French, such were the hopeless ambitions which filled her heart. Grandison got up from his chair as she came in but he said nothing, only bowed and sat down again with his eyes on her face. Richard was washing his hands in the corner. “Don’t come near me, Anne, I am covered with paint,” he called out, but his voice sounded friendly as though he were glad to see her.
Ginette laid her hand on her shoulder:
“You are very beautiful,” she brought out laboriously. She had been practising the phrase all the morning, and the unexpected words set Anne blushing with pleasure. “Richard has said much of you but not that you are beautiful. He is bad.”
Anne’s blush was a blush of happiness, and she caught the French girl by the hand and pressed it. Ginette laughed and raised her eyebrows, and would have spoken if they had not been startled by Grandison, who ordered them to sit down to luncheon.
“I have brought some of the drawings I did for fashion plates to show you,” said Anne, but Richard did not refer to them when the meal was over; he seemed more interested in Dry Coulter than in Paris, and began to speak of the village while his companions sat in silence.
“I have heard from Rachel: she is very excited as she is going to be chosen Queen of the May. You know May-day is even more of an institution than Plough Monday,” he said, turning towards Grandison. “It is celebrated more pleasantly in an English village than in Paris.” And Richard began to describe how five little girls were chosen, of whom Rachel would be the leader, to go from house to house carrying an arbour of flowers and singing whatever songs they happened to know.
“The arbour is made of cowslips and may, with a few of the early purple orchids,” said Anne, calling up the memory of May-day a year ago. “It was raining when they came to the vicarage and they wore yellow ribbons and sang ‘Ta ra ra Boom de ay.’ I opened the door and they went on singing without paying any attention to the sixpence I held out to them.”