The Girl From His Town

by Marie Van Vorst

CHAPTER XXVI—WHITE AND CORAL

Spring in Paris, which comes in a fashion so divine that even the most calloused and indifferent are impressed by its beauty, awakened no answering response in the heart of the young man who, from his hotel window, looked out on the desecrated gardens of the Tuileries—on the distant spires of the churches whose names he did not know—on the square block of old palaces. He had missed the boat across the Channel taken by Letty Lane, and the delay had made him lose what little trace of her he had. In the early hours of the morning he had flung himself in at the St. James, taken the indifferent room they could give him in the crowded season, and excited as he was he slept and did not waken until noon. Blair thought it would be a matter of a few hours only to find the whereabouts of the celebrated actress, but it was not such an easy job. He had not guessed that she might be traveling incognito, and at none of the hotels could he hear news of her, nor did he pass her in the crowded, noisy, rustling, crying streets, though he searched motors for her with eager eyes, and haunted restaurants and cafés, and went everywhere that he thought she might be likely to be.

At the end of the third day, unsuccessful and in despair, having hardly slept and scarcely eaten, the unhappy young lover found himself taking a slight luncheon in the little restaurant known as the Perouse down on the Quais. His head on his hand, for the present moment the joy of life gone from him, he looked out through the windows at the Seine, at the bridge and the lines of flowering trees. He was the only occupant of the upper room where, of late, he had ordered his luncheon.

The tide of life rolled slowly in this quieter part of the city, and as Blair sat there under the window there passed a piper playing a shrill, sweet tune. It was so different from any of the loud metropolitan clamors, with which his ears were full, that he got up, walked to the window and leaned out. It was a pastoral that met his eyes. A man piping, followed by little pattering goats; the primitive, unlooked-for picture caught his tired attention, and, just then, opposite the Quais, two women passed—flower sellers, their baskets bright with crocuses and giroflés. The bright picture touched him and something of the springlike beauty that the day wore and that dwelt in the May light, soothed him as nothing had for many hours.

He paid his bill, took courage, picked up his hat and gloves and stick and walked out briskly, crossing the bridge to the Rue de Rivoli, determined that night should not fall until he found the woman he sought. Nor did it, though the afternoon wore on and Dan, pursuing his old trails, wandered from worldly meeting place to worldly meeting place. Finally, toward six o’clock, he saw the lengthening shadows steal into the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, and in one of the smaller alleys, where the green-trunked trees of the forests were full of purple shadows and yellow sun discs, flickering down, he picked up a small iron chair and sat himself down, with a long sigh, to rest.

While he sat there watching the end of the allée as it gave out into the broader road, a beautiful red motor rolled up to the conjunction of the two ways and Letty Lane, in a summer frock, got out alone. She had a flowing white veil around her head and a flowing white scarf around her shoulders. As the day on the Thames, she was all in white—like a dove. But this time her costume was made vivid and picturesque by the coral parasol she carried, a pair of coral-colored kid shoes, around her neck and falling on their long chain, she wore his coral beads. He saw that he observed her before she did him. All this Dan saw before he dashed into the road, came up to her with something like a cry on his lips, bareheaded, for his hat and his stick and his gloves were by his chair in the woods.

Letty Lane’s hands went to her heart and her face took on a deadly pallor. She did not seem glad to see him. Out of his passionate description of the hours that he had been through, of how he had looked for her, of what he thought and wanted and felt, the actress made what she could, listening to him as they both stood there under the shadows of the green trees. Scanning her face for some sign that she loved him, for it was all he cared for, Dan saw no such indication there. He finished with:

“You know what Ruggles told you was a lie. Of course, I’ve got money enough to give you everything you want. He’s a lunatic and ought to be shut up.”

“It may have been a lie, all right,” she said with forced indifference; “I’ve had time to think it over. You are too young. You don’t know what you want.” She stopped his protestations: “Well, then, I am too old and I don’t want to be tied down.”

When he pressed her to tell him whether or not she had ceased to care for him, she shook her head slowly, marking on the ground fine tracery with the end of her coral parasol. He had been obliged to take her back to the red motor, but before they were in earshot of her servants, he said: