"I comprehend, Madame."
When she was gone Olga threw herself on a couch upon the terrace and read a French Play just published. There was a heroine with a past who loved quite madly a young man with a future and she succeeded in killing his love for her by the simple expedient of telling him the truth. At this point Olga dropped the book upon the flagging and sat up abruptly, her face set in rigid lines.
Silly fool! What more right had he to her past than she had to his. The world had changed since that had been the code of life. That code was a relic of the dark ages when the Tree of Knowledge grew only in the Garden of Eden. Now the Tree of Knowledge grew in every man's garden and in every woman's.
She marveled that a dramatist of modern France could have gone back into the past for such a theme. It was the desire to seem original, of course, to be different from other writers—an affectation of naïveté, quite out of keeping with the spirit of the hour—unintelligent as well as uninteresting. (You see Olga didn't believe in the double standard.)
She got up, spurning the guilty volume with her foot and walked out into the rose garden. But their odor made her unhappy and she went indoors. She began now to regret that she had not gone down to the house party of Madeleine de Cahors at Alençon. At least Pierre de Folligny would have been there—Chandler Cushing, and the Renauds—a jolly crowd of people among whom there was never time to think of one's troubles—still less to brood over them as she had been doing to-day.
The return of her maid from Paris added something to the sum of her information. Miss Challoner had left her hotel at ten in the morning in her new machine with an intention of making a record to Trouville. Titine was to follow her there when the shopping should be finished. In the meanwhile a telegram had come dated at Passy, telling of the change in plans, with orders for Titine to remain in Paris until further notice. Several days had passed and Titine still waited in Miss Challoner's apartment at the hotel which was costing, so Titine related, three hundred francs a day. It was all quite mystifying and Titine was worried, but then Mademoiselle was no longer a child and, of course, Titine had only to obey orders.
Olga listened carelessly, examining Georgette's purchases, and when the maid had gone she sat for a long time in her chair by the window thinking.
At last she got up suddenly, went down into the library and found the paper booklet of the _Chemins de Fer de l'État. In this there was a map of Normandy and Brittany and after a long search she found the name she was looking for—Passy—south from Evreux on the road to Dreux—this was the town from which Hermia's telegram to Titine had been sent.
Olga's long polished finger nail shuttled back and forth. Here was Paris, there Rouen, here Evreux—there Alençon. Curious! Hermia with her machine doing in half a day from Paris what John Markham had taken four days from Rouen to do afoot. What more improbable? And yet entirely possible!
She took the livret to her room where she could examine it at her ease and sent to the garage for a road map which had been left in the car of the Duchesse. The livret and map she compared, and diligently studied, arriving, toward the middle of the afternoon, at a sudden resolution.