This studio lay behind a shabby little house in the Place du Tertre, and was built low and wide and elegant to the caprice of an adventurous artist, one Kay Benson; and with it was a garden of flowers by day and lanterns by night, a little garden replete with the secret of all lovely gardens, for a man and a woman could sit in it: thence to stare down at the mists of the busy city and the thin and lively riband of the Seine, at the whole pageant and the confusion of mighty Paris, from the Mont Valérien to the grim old Lion de Belfort.
It was by devious ways and for various reasons that, on that first of May, Ivor and Virginia climbed from the luxury of the Place Vendôme to the solitude of the Butte, to the studio over against the queer church of Sacré Cœur; for is it not queer that men should have climbed so high and laboured so long to build so ugly a church as Sacré Cœur? which is thus a fitting ambition for the silly revellers of Montmartre to reach by dawn, for it is an ugly church even in the dawn and only distance can make it beautiful.
CHAPTER XIII
1
Their pact was to outlaw themselves from England and all men, from the March day when they arrived in Paris until October. But one cannot be undisturbed in the heart of Paris: which must, of course, be only a figure of speech, for surely the heart of Paris must lie otherwhere than about the rue de la Paix, else men would not so easily die for it. And, too, it was now the chattering Paris of departing armies and approaching Conference, when Lady Tarlyon could not take a step without being recognised and hailed: and Ivor had to be continually standing aside and trying to look as though himself had met her by chance only a moment before.
So they had left Paris, very shortly after their first arrival, and again by car. The world was before them, but they had not a wide choice of direction. Northwards were still soldiers and ruins, westwards were armaments going to rest, eastwards was never but rather dull—so they went towards the Pyrenees, staying where they happened. They went to Hendaye and to St. Jean de Luz—but not to Biarritz!
“Oh no, not Biarritz! We are not feeling at all smart these days!” Virginia cried in his ear, and jolly nearly bit it; which was a sudden habit of hers that caused words between them, for she seemed to like doing it, but it hurt him. “Who has more right to bite your ear than I?” Virginia cried, and because he remarked that she should have said “me” instead of “I,” she punished him. “Oh, you beast, Ivor! you like it, you know you do! And besides your own grammar in your books is rotten....”
But no god known to man can be so absurdly and unreservedly kind to two people; and so there travelled in the car with Ivor and Virginia, the chauffeur and the maid (the amiable “Smith”), an invisible but impish little traveller—none other than that “sick little pain”! It plagued Virginia increasingly, that sick little pain inside her; and soon its mark was laid softly upon her face, always clear-white as a white camellia; but lately it was as though the deity of her father’s button-hole was becoming the deity of Virginia’s complexion, for a gardenia was not more wan nor peculiar-white than the disturbing pallor of her face. Her lips Virginia coloured, but never a touch of rouge touched her cheek, for she said that many Carnal generations had established her complexion, and who was she to risk breaking the entail of so precious a property? And Ivor agreed with her, saying that she was quite right to have the courage of her own complexion....
Now one day it came to pass that the stuff in the little white bottle, in which there was opium and mint, lost all its soothing properties; and the bravery of Virginia—it was only a very little pain, after all!—was of no avail against the solicitude of Ivor, so that Paris saw them again on an afternoon in April.