"You see me colouring," I laughed nervously. "You have guessed: I am a bit ashamed of not knowing my Shakespeare as well as I can see you do."
The half-lie saved me. It most intimately flattered her vanity: that she, the French girl, should be thought to know an English poet better than I. No variety of self-content is more delicious than that which fills a foreigner when she can soar over the natives in knowledge of their own land.
"You are too modest," said Elise. "Now which of those two plays shall we begin with?"
I had clean forgotten one title, and was not sure of repeating the other correctly. "Which do you think? It is you who should choose," I returned generously. At all costs she must repeat one of the names.
"Macbeth then. I think it is the finer."
"Yes, Macbaith," I agreed, imitating her pronunciation as closely as I could. "Perhaps you would lend me your copy. Reading it through would"—I recoiled from "refresh my memory"—"would be useful. I'll read it over tonight. The Countess won't mind my reading in my room?"
"Your room is yours to do what you like in. We all do what we like here; I hope you'll do the same."
So that night the bedroom of a French Château saw me make the acquaintance of the greatest of my fellow-countrymen, of multitudinous seas and perfumes of Araby, and of a theme new in print only: a woman's vaulting ambition.
Reading, in fact, by myself or with Elise, became my chief distraction. Elise's sour face held no sour looks for me. I would watch the high blue-veined forehead and the sad white face as we were reading together. For the first time—with the one exception of Lord Tawborough, in whom also intelligence and purity, in their manlier setting, were the qualities that attracted me—I found myself admiring some one, acknowledging frankly to myself that here was something better than I. Her kindness, her sadness, her literary enthusiasm all heightened the effect; and in the ardour of books and discussion sprang up my first real friendship. It ripened slowly, for she was as proud as I. We did not wallow in confidences, knowing that at the right moment they could come.