“What a dear thing you are!” she said. “How good it is to see some one who can really feel! How tired one gets of the fin-de-siècle spirit in both women and men! Bless you, my Martha! You have come to be a great joy in my life. I feel that we are going to be friends for always—do you?”
“Oh, if you will let me! If you will only not be disappointed in me! I am afraid to speak, afraid to breathe almost, for fear that you will find out that I am only a poor, commonplace little creature, in whom your goodness has made you see something which does not exist. Oh, I pray I may not disappoint you! And yet how can I dare to hope?”
“Listen, Martha,” said the princess in a matter-of-fact tone, as she drew the other down to a seat beside her on the lounge; “let us take each other quite simply, and not promise anything. We will just agree to be perfectly natural with each other—just to be ourselves. If you continue to like me, and I you, it is all right. If not, we shall have broken no pledges and done each other no wrong. Now, with that basis to go upon, we can both feel natural and satisfied. Only don’t cover up your real self to me, for you may be concealing just what I love, and pretending what I hate. It is because you are different from others that I have been so drawn to you. Now don’t try to be like other people, and ruin everything.”
“Oh, I feel I can be myself with you. I feel I can tell you everything that is in my heart, and talk of things that I have never been able to speak of to others. How beautiful it is! How strange that such a relationship between two women can come about here in Paris in this age of the world!”
“It could not if we were Parisians; but both of us being foreign to this atmosphere, it can. I love your being an American. I felt sure you were even before I asked Etienne.”
“And did he tell you? I have always understood that he never answered questions about his students.”
“So have I; but I asked him all the same, and he told me who you were. I had quite fancied you before, and after that I fancied you still more, as I love the ideal of the American, a creature newer from Nature’s hands, and nearer to her heart, than we of the Old World; and, fortunately or otherwise, I have known too few of your people either to confirm or contradict this idea. So now I think I shall go on liking you. And how is it with you? Do you think you will not be disappointed in me?”
Her beautiful lips widened in a smile of broad amusement that made her eyes twinkle. Martha looked at her with a speechless adoration which she could not have been so dense as to misunderstand.
“How delightful!” said the princess. “It has been so long since I have permitted myself the luxury of a friend that my appetite for one is all the keener.”
She had thrown herself back on the lounge, and as Martha sat down by her, the princess again took her hand, saying as she did so: