The answers to these questions were still puzzling him when they drove up the hill by the Boulevard St. Michel—Boul' Miché she called it—reached the Luxembourg Gardens and then turning into a smaller street were presently deposited at their porte cochère. Her air of gayety was infectious and she presented him to the good Madame Toupin, who came out to meet them with the air of one greeting an ambassador.
"Welcome, Monsieur le Lieutenant. Madame Horton has promised us this visit since a long time."
"Merci, Madame."
"Enter, Monsieur—this house is honored. Thank the bon Dieu for the Americans."
Jim Horton bowed and followed Moira into the small court and up the stairway, experiencing a new sense of guilt at having his name coupled so familiarly with Moira's. Harry's name too—. And yet the circumstances of the marriage were so strange, the facts as to her actual relations with her husband so patent, that he found himself resenting Moira's placid acceptance of the appellation. There was something back of it all that he did not know.... But Moira gave him no time to think of the matter, conducting him into the large studio and showing him through the bedroom and kitchen, where she proudly exhibited her goose (and Jim Horton's) that she was to cook. And after he had deposited his luggage in a room nearby which he was to occupy, she removed her gloves in a business-like manner, took off her hat and coat, and invited him into the kitchen.
"Allons, Monsieur," she said gayly in French, as she rolled up her sleeves.
"We shall now cook a goose, in this modern apparatus so kindly furnished by the Compagnie de Gaz. There's a large knife in the drawer. You will now help me to cut up the potatoes—Julienne,—and the carrots which we shall stew. Then some lettuce and a beautiful dessert from the pâtisserie—and a demi-tasse. What more can the soul of man desire?"
"Rien," he replied with a triumphant grin of understanding from behind the dish pan. "Absolument rien."
"Ah, you do understand," she cried in English. "Was she a blonde—cendrée? Or dark with sloe-eyes? Or red-haired? If she was red-haired, Harry, I'll be scratching her eyes out. No?"
He shook his head and laughed.