She was surprised a little at my incoherence and Flossie’s strange face, but she was evidently a much-experienced woman-of-the-world, whom nothing could surprise very much. “Oh, that’s very kind,” she said civilly, tossing her cigarette butt away and folding her strong hands on her ample knees, “But I went that way on the road coming into town. I remembered it perfectly I find. I used it as the background in a portrait, some years ago.”
She saw no reason for expanding the topic and now stopped speaking. I could think of nothing more to say. There was a profound silence. Our hostess evidently took us for tongue-tied, small-town people who do not know how to get themselves out of a room, and went on making conversation for us with a vague, fluent, absent-minded kindness. “It’s very pleasant to be here again. I stayed here once, you know, a few weeks, many years ago, when I was young. We had quite a jolly time, I remember. There was a boy here ... a slim, dark, tall fellow, with the most perfect early-Renaissance head imaginable, quite like the Jeune Homme Inconnu. I’ve been trying all day to remember his name? Paul?... no. Walter?... it had two syllables it seems to me. Well, at any rate, he had two great beauties, the pale, flat white of his skin, and his great shaggy mass of dark hair. I’ve often used his hair in drawings, since. But I don’t suppose he looks like that now.”
Flossie spoke. She spoke with the effect of a revolver discharging a bullet, “Oh, yes, he does! He looks exactly like that still, only more mature, more interesting,” she said in an indignant tone.
“Ah, indeed,” said the painter with an accent of polite acquiescence. She sighed now and looked firmly at the clock. I rose and said since we could not be of use to her, we would leave her to rest.
She accompanied us to the door pleasantly enough, with the professional, impersonal courtesy of a celebrity.
Outside Flossie sprang into her car, leaving me stranded on the sidewalk. “I must get Peter away,” she said between her teeth.
“But not now, surely!” I cried.
“Now more than ever,” she flung back at me, as she whirled the car around.
Then as I stood open-mouthed, utterly at a loss, she drove the car close to the curb and leaning to my ear, whispered fiercely, “You don’t suppose I’d let him see how she looks now.”
Miss Arling was gone before they returned from the two-day fishing-trip on which they started that night. I doubt if Peter ever heard that she had been in town.