"I thought I should find you in the museum painting, but here you are, idling in this pretty alley, and in the evening you'll tell us you've been working all day."
"Will you come for a walk?" I said, thinking that the gardens might interest her, and, if they did not, the people we should meet could not fail to amuse her. It was just the time to see the man who came every morning to feed the sparrows; he had taught them to take bread from his lips, and I thought that Mildred would like to see the funny little birds hopping about his feet, so quaint, so full of themselves, seeming to know all about it. Then if we had luck we might meet Robin Hood, for in those days a man used to wander in the gardens wearing the costume of the outlaw, and armed with a bow and quiver. The strange folk one meets in the Luxembourg Gardens are part of their charm. Had I not once met a man in armour, not plate, but the beautiful chain armour of the thirteenth century, sitting on a bench eating his lunch, his helmet beside him?--a model no doubt come from a studio for the lunch hour, or maybe he was an exalté or a fumist; a very innocent fumist if he were one, not one of the Quarter certainly, for even the youngest among us would know that it would take more than a suit of armour to astonish the frequenters of the gardens. As we came down a flight of steps we met an old man and his wife, an aged couple nearly seventy years of age, playing football, and the gambols of this ancient pair in the pretty April sunlight were pathetic to watch. I called her attention to them, telling her that in another part of the garden three old women came to dance; but seeing that Mildred was not interested, I took the first opportunity to talk of something else. She was more interested in the life of the Quarter, in le bal Bullier, in my stories of grisettes and students; and I noticed that she considered every student as he passed, his slim body buttoned tightly in a long frock-coat, with hair flowing over his shoulders from under his slouched hat, just as she had considered each man on board the boat a week ago as we crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne. We had met on the boat; I noticed her the moment I got on board; her quiet, neat clothes were unmistakably French, though not the florid French clothes Englishwomen so often buy and wear so badly. The stays she had on I thought must be one of those little ribbon stays with very few bones, and as she walked up and down she kept pressing her leather waistband still more neatly into its place, looking first over one shoulder and then over the other. She reminded me of a bird, so quick were her movements, and so alert. She was nice-looking, not exactly pretty, for her lips were thin, her mouth too tightly closed, the under lip almost disappearing, her eyes sloped up very much at the corners, and her eyebrows were black, and they nearly met.
The next time I saw her she was beside me at dinner--we had come by chance to the same hotel, a small hotel in the Rue du Bac. Her mother was with her, an elderly, sedate Englishwoman, to whom the girl talked very affectionately, "Yes, dearest mamma"; "No, dearest mamma." She had a gay voice, though she never seemed to laugh or joke; but her face had a sad expression, and she sighed continually. After dinner her mother went to the piano and played with a great deal of accent and noise the "Brooklyn Cake Walk."
"We used to dance that at Nice. Oh, dear mamma, do you remember that lovely two-step?"
Her mother nodded and smiled, and began playing a Beethoven sonata, but she had not played many bars before her daughter said:
"Now, mother, don't play any more; come and talk to us."
I asked her if she did not like Beethoven. She shrugged her shoulders; an expression of irritation came into her face. She either did not want to talk of Beethoven then, or she was incapable of forming any opinion about him, and, judging from her interest in the "Brooklyn Cake Walk," I said:
"The Cake Walk is gayer, isn't it?"
The sarcasm seemed lost upon her; she sat looking at me with a vague expression in her eyes, and I found it impossible to say whether it was indifference or stupidity.
"Mildred plays Beethoven beautifully. My daughter loves music. She plays the violin better than anybody you ever heard in your life."