CHAPTER XVI.
EMBERS.
ON the way across the Atlantic her painful thoughts faded; and, after the mid-ocean period when the worlds on either side of those infinite waters dwindle into unreality, she found her imagination looking forward to her new world as a place where there would be a new beginning in her work and in her love. At Cherbourg Marlowe came out on the lighter. “How handsome he is,” she was saying to herself, as she leaned against the rail, watching his eyes search for her. “And how well he wears his clothes. His head is set upon his shoulders just right—what a strong, graceful figure he has.” And she again felt something resembling her initial interest and pride in him, her mind once more, as at first, interpreting his character through his appearance, instead of reading into his appearance the man as she knew him.
When their eyes met she welcomed and returned the thought he sent her in his look.
They were soon together, bubbling over with the joy of living like two children let out into the sunshine to play after a long imprisonment with lessons. They had a compartment to themselves down to Paris and sat very near each to the other, with illustrated papers as the excuse for prolonging the enormous pleasure of the physical sensation of nearness. They repeated again and again the commonplaces which all human beings use as public coaches to carry their inarticulate selves a visiting each other.
She went to sleep for a few minutes, leaning against him; and a breeze teased his nerves into an ecstasy of happiness with a stray of her fine red-brown hair. “I’ve never been so happy,” she thought as she awakened, “I could never be happier.” She did not move until it became impossible for her to refrain from some outward expression of her emotions. Then she only looked up at him. And his answer showed that his mood was hers. As they sank back in the little victoria outside the station, she gave a long look round the busy, fascinating scene—strange, infectious of gaiety and good-humour. “Paris!” she said, with a sigh of content in her dream realised.
“Paris—and Emily,” he replied.
They went to a small hotel in the Avenue Montaigne—“Modern enough,” he said, “but very French and not yet discovered by foreigners.” At sunset they drove to d’Armenonville to dine under the trees and to watch the most interesting groups in the world—those groups of the civilised through and through, in dress, in manners, in thought. After two days he was called back to London. When he returned at the end of two weeks she had transformed herself. A new gown, a new hat, a new way of wearing her hair, an adaptation of her graces of form and manner to the fashion of the moment, and she seemed a Parisienne.
“You have had your eyes open,” he said, as he noted one detail after another, finally reaching the face which bloomed so delicately beneath the sweeping brim of her hat. “And what a gorgeous hat! And put on at the miraculous angle—how few women know how to put on a hat.” Of his many tricks in the art at which he excelled—the art of superficially pleasing women—none was more effective than his intelligent appreciation of their dress.
They staid at her pretty little apartment in a maison meublèe in the Rue des Capucines; in a few days they went down into Switzerland, and then, after a short pause at Paris, to Trouville. In all they were together about a month, he neglecting his work in spite of her remonstrances and her example. For she did her work conscientiously—and she had never written so well. He tried to stay on with her at Paris, but she insisted on his going.
“I believe you wish to be rid of me,” he said, irritation close beneath the surface of his jesting manner.