Beth had been taken possession of by a stout smiling young man with horn-rimmed glasses and was already the center of a little group. Jean heard his name, and recognized it as that of a famous illustrator. Aldo introduced her to a tall girl in brown whom he had met in Italy, and then somehow, Jean could not have told how it happened, they drifted apart. Not but what she was glad of a breathing spell, just a chance to get her bearings. Morel was showing some recent canvases, still unframed, at the end of the studio, and everyone seemed to gravitate that way.
Jean found a quiet corner just as someone handed her fragrant tea in a little red and gold cup, and she was free to look around her. A beautiful woman had just arrived. She was tall and past first youth, but Jean leaned forward expectantly. This must be the Contessa. Her gown seemed as indefinite and elusive in detail as a cloud. It was dull blue violet in color, with a gleam of gold here and there as she moved slowly toward Morel’s group. Under a wide-brimmed felt hat, the same shade of blue violet, Jean saw the lifted face, with tired lovely eyes, and close waves of pale golden hair. And this was not all. If only Doris could have seen her, thought Jean. She had wanted a princess from real life, or a countess, anything that was tangibly romantic and noble, and here was the very pattern of a princess, even to a splendid white Russian wolfhound that followed her with docile eyes and drooping long nose.
“My dear, would you mind coaxing that absent-minded girl at the tea table to part with some lemon for my tea? And the Roquefort sandwiches are excellent too.”
Jean turned at the sound of the new voice beside her. There on the same settee sat a robust, middle-aged latecomer. Her black coat was worn and frayed, her hat altogether too youthful with its pink and purple roses veiled in net. Jean saw, too, that there was a button missing from her dress, and her collar was pinned at a slightly crooked angle. But the collar was real lace and the pin was of old pearls and amethysts. It was her face that charmed. Framed in an indistinct mass of fluffy hair, mixed gray and blonde, with a turned-up, winning mouth, and delightfully expressive eyes, it was impossible not to feel immediately interested and acquainted.
Before long, Jean found herself indulging in all sorts of confidences. They seemed united by a common feeling of, not isolation exactly, but newness to this circle.
“I enjoy it so much more sitting over here and looking on,” Jean said. “Beth, my cousin, knows everyone, of course, but it is like a painting. You close one eye, and get the group effect. And I must remember everything to write home to the girls and Tommy.”
“Tell me about them. Who are they that you love them so?” asked her new friend. “I, too, like the bird’s-eye view best. I told Morel I did not come to see anything but his pictures, and now I am ready for tea and talk.”
So Jean told all about Woodhow and the family there and before she knew it, she had disclosed too, her own hopes and ambitions, and perhaps a glimpse of what it might mean to the others at home, if she, the first to leave, could only make good. And her companion told her, in return, of how sure one must be that the career decided upon was what one really wanted before one gives up all to it.
“Over in France, and in Italy, too, but mostly in France,” she said, “I have found girls like you who before the war were living on little but hopes, wasting their time and what money could be spared them from some home over here, following false hopes, and sometimes starving. It is but a will-o’-the-wisp, this success in art, a sort of pitiful madness that takes possession of our brains and hearts and makes us forget the commonplace things in life that lie before us.”
“But how can you tell for sure?” asked Jean, leaning forward anxiously.