She thought it still a prettier world, when in the cab as she was accompanying Eugenia back to Auteuil, Eugenia said, radiating satisfaction, "I'm to have my part in the fête-de-charité, too!"
"You are!" said Marise, "what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to give the money to pay for the appearance of a Russian dancer ... the very newest thing. It will be the clou of the entire fête. And my name is going on the program!"
"Eh bien!" cried Marise in the liveliest surprise, "why, I didn't hear a word about all this."
"No, it was in talking with M. Vallery that the plan was made. He hadn't dreamed of their being able to afford such a thing. It was my own idea. He was quite carried away by it, couldn't see how I came to think of it."
Marise was silent, meditating profoundly on the prettiness of the world in which we are called upon to live. The more she meditated, the hotter grew her resentment. It was all very well to be cynical, and it was foolish and raw to be surprised at cynicism, but this was a little ... really a little excessive! She flushed angrily as she went over in her mind the oiled exactitude with which each cog had slipped into the next, the casual invitation to Eugenia, M. Vallery's admiration of her beauty, the talk on the balcony ... oh, poor Eugenia! what a fool she must have seemed, with her naïve impression that it was her own idea! And how that fatuous barber's model must have laughed with his wife after they had left! The shameless team-work with which they had turned the talk to something far-away, and kept it there ... and, she flinched, her vanity cut to the quick, her own naïve blindness to the little game they were putting up on her. Well, she would know better next time. She had unpeeled one more layer from this pretty, pretty world of ours.
Speaking on impulse, she now said rather abruptly, to Eugenia, "I wouldn't have much to do with the Vallerys, if I were you. He's really an awful cad."
Eugenia looked at her with a knowing smile, "You're jealous," she said laughing, "he didn't take you off to show you the Luxembourg in spring!"
Marise was for an instant stricken so speechless by this idea that she could only stare. And by the time she could have spoken, she perceived that there was nothing to say, no comment on the prettiness of the world and the people who live in it, that began to be adequate.
At the great gates of the school-parc, Eugenia and her maid descended. Eugenia kissed Marise good-by, the correct kiss on each cheek this time. Nothing annoyed Eugenia more than any reference, intended or imaginary, to the time when she had gone about kissing her school-mates on the mouth.