They sat in the long drawing-room where they might look out over the sun-drenched garden with its blue flame of irises lighting up the expanses of gray stone.
“What a lovely house!” remarked Sabine as she drew off her gloves. “I suppose it is your cousin’s.”
The speech was stiff, constrained by the vague shadow of hostility that had enveloped them, almost at once—an intangible thing, which it is probable both women felt but failed to understand, because each fancied herself too intelligent to be the victim of jealousy.
“Yes. It belongs to Madame Shane.”
Sabine laughed. “It’s the sort of house I would like. You see we live, when we’re in Paris, in a sort of World’s Fair exhibit in the Avenue du Bois.”
It surprised Ellen to find that a single, small word such as “we” could cause her any feeling. She found too that the presence of Sabine had turned back the years; she was watching her now, as she might watch an enemy, as she had watched her in the days when she had gone, a young and awkward girl, to the big house on Murray Hill. She had not “watched” people in quite this fashion for a long time now.
She felt herself quite a match for the worldly woman who sat, carefully, with the brilliant light at her back; she could no longer be taken at a disadvantage.
“It is strange,” said Ellen, “that we have not met before.”
Sabine’s scarlet lips curved in a bright hard smile. “I saw you once, in the distance, at the Ritz. It was nearly four years ago. You went out before I was able to speak to you.” She coughed, nervously. “So I lost trace of you. I was sorry, because I was interested to know how you had come to Paris so soon.”
“I just came. There was nothing strange about it.”