The heat had started early in May, and it kept on getting hotter and hotter, with only sudden and savage thunderstorms, which passed over the city like outraged spirits, and deluged it for a few hours with rain that became steam as soon as it touched the scorched pavements. Occasionally some fresh wind would penetrate into the city, as if bent on missionary work; but it was soon conquered by the demons of heat. It grew hotter and hotter. It seemed as if the city would perish in its own heat—and then came the month of August!
I shall never forget that August. Even now, wherever I am during that month, my spirit goes back to that desolate city to share in the sufferings of its poor people who have to work long hours in hot offices, and then at night try to sleep in small, still hotter rooms, with the fiendish noise of the city outside. And it is then again that my dream comes back to me, to give trees all along the streets and all along the avenues, and shady open spaces to breathe in.
CHAPTER XXI
IN REAL AMERICA
IT was in meeting again the hotel proprietor, when I went back to pay him my debt, that I first realized what a summer in the land of promise had done for me. He did not know me at all. Thinking it quite natural he should not remember one among the thousands he saw yearly, I tried to recall myself to his memory.
“You don’t mean to say,” he cried, “that you are the child who was here a few months ago! Have you been ill?”
“No.”
“Then what have you done to yourself?”
I had not done anything to myself, but the work and the heat had robbed me of all my colour, of half my hair, and of pounds of weight.
At the French home my fellow-inmates were mostly of the servant class. They were very kind to me: they made my bed, swept my room, washed my hair, did my little mending, and even brought me sweets. They expressed the hope that I should meet some nice American who would offer me marriage, yet they confessed that American people were singularly devoid of sentiment.