"How long is it since you have seen my mother?"
He did not at once reply. She raised her head and looked at him. Then she knew the truth. She set her teeth and fought. A little sob was strangled in her throat.
"I left your mother a few minutes ago," he told her. "She arrived in
Paris this morning and sent for me."
Lady Anne worked for a time in silence. Then she laid the bow, which she had finished, upon the table, and leaned back in her chair, clasping her right knee with her hands.
"You really are the queerest person, Julien," she declared. "How you were ever a success as a diplomatist I can't imagine! You came in with the air of one charged with a high and holy mission. It was so obvious and yet for a moment it puzzled me. How I would love to have been with you this morning—with you and my mother, I mean—somewhere behind a curtain! Never mind, you've done the really right and honorable thing—you have given me my chance. I am very grateful, Julien."
She looked frankly enough into his face now and laughed. Julien remained silent.
"Can't you see, both of you," Anne went on, "you silly people, that something quite alien to us and our set has found its way into my life—a sort of middle-class complaint—Heaven knows what you would call it!—but it came just in time to place me in a most awkward position. I still haven't any doubt that marriage is a very respectable and desirable institution, but to me the idea of it as a matter of convenience has suddenly become—well, a little worse than the thing which we all shudder at so righteously when we pass along the streets of Paris. Of course, I know," she added, "that's a shocking point of view. My mother would hold, and you, too, that a legalized sale is no sale at all, that matrimony is a perfectly hallowed institution, a perfectly moral state, and all the rest of it. You see, I very nearly admitted it myself—I very nearly sold myself!"
She shuddered. Then she rose to her feet, straight and splendid, with all the grace of her beautiful young womanhood.
"Men don't think just as we do about this," she continued. "You are all much too Oriental. But a woman has at least a right to keep what she doesn't choose to sell, even if in the end she chooses to give it."
Julien moved a step nearer to her.