Fontenelle paused a moment. “Even at the time,” he said rather slowly, “I wondered how she would strike René. Because she wasn’t really beautiful, you know. Certainly not in those days. Only remarkable looking, curious, and very sweet.”
“But he was struck too?”
“I remember he looked up suddenly, and said, ‘By Jove, who on earth is this? It’s some garden goddess or other. Flora. Yes, that’s it,—Flora. Good Lord, let’s run out and burn incense or something!’
“She had a heap of flowers, branches of lilac and hawthorn and things, in one arm, supported against her hip, and with the other hand she held her dress away from her feet. She was moving quickly across the grass. You know how she walks?
“Then she came into the drawing-room, and we saw her curious face.”
“There it is!” said the Vicomte, with his eyes on the portrait. “You’ve got it exactly. Something between a Botticelli Madonna and a pagan goddess—Flora is admirable. But it’s the sort of face that it takes a painter to admire.”
“She had been considered hideous all her life, of course. She thought herself desperately plain. Even when we burnt incense,—and René at once began to send it up in clouds,—she thought we were laughing at her.” François laughed gently himself.
“You remember Anne? You know how she would take praise. Adorably, like a little girl who is almost too shy to be pleased. It was absurd, of course. She was by no means young even then, remember. But somehow that only made it more piquante. Anne is one of the few women for whom age is an absurd convention. Quite meaningless, quite beside the point. The goddesses are immortal.”
“But there was nothing of the goddess about her nature,” objected his friend.
“Good heavens, no! Except physically. She’s a mortal woman if ever there was one. She’s just what she always was, sweet Anne Page.”