Our next meeting was at Madeleine’s. Madeleine was the woman who looked after my face. Bianca went to her too. I was sitting in front of the dressing-table, my head tied up in a towel, my face plastered with grease, when Bianca came in. She chattered and gossiped and held up the photograph of herself in the costume of the Spanish bull-ring. “I was distracting myself—” she laughed. “I had been bothered by some very curious ideas. You remember our talk at the ‘Château des trois Maries.’ Well, that sort of thing. I thought the excitement would help. It did. I was within a yard of the bull when he died. Some of the blood splashed me. I didn’t like that.”
I broke in saying that I didn’t believe a word of it.
“Don’t you, Jane? Well, it’s no matter. It’s unimportant. The important thing is that I’m sick to death of everything. Every one bores me. I find you are the only woman in Paris who is alive. I’ve been watching you—you are very extraordinary. You care for no one. You are self-sufficient. You have achieved the impossible.”
All this time Madeleine was massaging my face and pretending not to be interested. I could say nothing. I boiled with rage, helpless, wrapped in sheets and towels, my face plastered with grease, and Bianca sat there, her little white face buried in her furs and laughed at me. When at last she had gone, Madeleine said the Princess had such a beautiful character.
I felt that I was being bated like one of her famous bulls. I resolved to make no move. I refused to be goaded to an attack. I was afraid of her.
Then one day Fan came to see me. Instead of rushing in with her usual shrill greeting, she walked up to me quietly, put her arm round me and laid her cheek against mine.
“I’m so happy, Jane dear; I’m so happy.” Her voice was gentle. “I have found what I have been waiting for all my life.” She went down on her knees and looked up into my face. Hers was calm and rested and had upon it an expression of sweetness that I had never seen there before. “I’m in love, Jane dear. I’m in love with the most wonderful man in the world. I wanted to tell you because I knew you’d be glad I was happy.”
She stayed with me for an hour and told me all about it. It was the strangest thing, hard cynical Fan, suddenly become young and sentimental and timid. They had met at St. Moritz that Christmas. He was an Englishman, half Irish really, with a strong streak of Celt in him. His name was Mark. She called him Micky. He was very beautiful, as beautiful as a god. He had taught her to ski. They had been together high up on snowy peaks above the world. One day she had fallen and sprained her ankle. He had carried her down the mountain in his arms. He was strong and straight like a young tree. He wanted her to divorce Ivanoff and marry him. He said there was no other way for them to be happy. He wanted to meet me. Would I come to lunch now, right away? He was waiting for us. She had told him all about me.
I went, of course. That boy,—you remember him, and how handsome he was, with his golden head and fresh bronzed cheeks and the long curly eyelashes fringing his blue eyes, and his broad sunny smile. He was too beautiful I had felt until he gave me that very broad smile.
Our luncheon was a happy absurd affair. Those two were ridiculously in love—they behaved like children. They beamed, they blushed, they looked into each other’s eyes, he very shy and sweet and attentive, calling her Fan, and in talking to me trying to be dreadfully solemn. “Please, Madame de Joigny, make her be serious. She must divorce that chap, you know. There’s no alternative. It’s got to be done and I want it done right away. Please back me up. I say, you mustn’t smile, you know. It’s dead serious.”