After the other two had rung the clanging bell and been admitted, Marise stood for a moment, hesitating. Then she decided to walk home, although home was a long, long way from Auteuil. It would do her good, she thought, setting out at the powerful, swinging gait she had for the long walks which for her, as for the more energetic of her classmates, had been the only form of outdoor sport accessible.
She had decided to walk so that she could cool off, and think over the Vallerys' manœuver, and as she walked she had it out with herself, going deep. By the end of the first mile she knew it was foolish and futile to resent the afternoon's comedy. That was the sort of thing everybody tried to do, only few people were as successful as Mme. Vallery. She knew well enough what she would get, if she pelted right in on them now, as they sat laughing over their little triumph. They would never dream of denying it, any more than she or her father would deny being the author of a far-laid plan in chess, which led to an opponent's defeat.
It was all a part of the game, and she might as well make up her mind to it, and renew her determination to keep out of the game as far as she personally was concerned. They were no worse than other people, only more intelligent and more interesting. She could tell, to the very turn of the phrase, what Mme. Vallery would say to her if she should have the crassness to go in and make a scene.
"My dear child, no power on earth can protect naïveté! It is a lamb whose wool belongs to the best shearer. Let her sharpen her wits, your young friend. She'll need to, sooner or later. It ought to have been the best of practice for her, a little skirmish like the one we just furnished her. She would do well to practise before she gets into a serious skirmish with somebody who really wants something out of her. What is this fête-de-charité for? To please me? Not at all. To make some money for poor people, mothers and anæmic babies. Show me another woman in our circle who puts herself out as much as I do for the poor! Your pretty friend has more money than is good for her. I'm only securing a little of it for the needy."
That was true, too, thought Marise. Mme. Vallery really did a lot of good, and very unostentatiously. If people were only far enough beneath her in intelligence and social position and money, she would do anything for them, very simply, in the nicest sort of way. And if she took a rather horrid delight in making fools of people more pretentious, what had Marise to reproach her with—she who could not refrain from malicious teasing! It was part of the same thing. Everything was part of the same thing. And the same thing always turned out to be very much the same. Also, Mme. Vallery had really always been very kind to Marise, seemed really fond of her, had given her innumerable opportunities which otherwise she would never....
"What does she want to get out of me?" Marise suddenly asked herself, struck by a sudden suspicion and wondering why she had never thought of this before.
Pondering this, unpeeling another layer, an acrid odor in her nostrils, she struck out into a longer, swifter gait, at her old futile trick of trying to hurry away from what was inside her heart.
The tall, slim, lithe girl, walking swiftly through the sweet spring twilight looked like the personification of spring-time with her fresh young face, her dewy dark eyes, her sensitive mobile young mouth, red as a dark red rose. She looked like Youth itself, welcoming in the new season. Several people glanced after her, and smiled with sympathy for her freshness and bloom and untouched virginal candor.