“Indeed—yes, Madame,” said Jean simply.
They were silent for a moment.
“And now tell me about your life,” said Madame gently. And Jean told her.
He had never before talked freely to a woman quite of his world and perfectly to his taste. He told her everything, his eyes lit up with the eagerness of his self-revelation; he poured the history of his heart out at her feet like water. Sometimes the tears came into her eyes as she listened to him, and once, when he spoke to her of Margot’s sacrifice and of his ashamed return, she put out her slender white hand and touched him, almost as a mother might.
“Poor boy! poor boy!” she said softly. “But how hard life is!”
When he had finished she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, as if she were thinking intently. The sympathy in her silence seemed to Jean the most beautiful thing he had ever found; except perhaps the sympathy in her voice when she spoke.
“I am glad you have told me all this,” she said. “It has touched me very much that you understood you could speak to me, and I am perhaps a woman not wholly without experience. You have had much to bear, and little happiness from women. Do not, however, believe that all love is fruitless—a lost and wandering fire! It does not always transfix and petrify us with the terrible beauty of the Medusa. I speak very simply to you, not as a woman of the world, but only perhaps as a woman, who, having lived amongst dross all my life, chose gold. Let me show you something.”
Madame Torialli rose as she spoke. She crossed the room to a tiny shrine upon her desk; the two little doors fell back at the touch of a spring. Jean saw nothing very wonderful inside, only the photograph of a man in evening dress—Torialli as he may have looked a hundred times over, on the platform about to sing. The wonderful thing was in Madame Torialli’s eyes. It was a moment of great emotional sincerity, for Madame Torialli loved her husband. For his sake she had left her world, the quiet distinguished world of the best blood in France, and married an artist. It is true that though she had left it, it had only been to bring it after her to his feet; and yet it had needed an imagination, a fine and an honest purpose, for her to take so strange a departure; and she came from the most conservative aristocracy in the world. She had never regretted her impulse. She loved art, as no artist ever loves it; and she knew the world of human beings as no artist can ever know it; and after being the greatest passion of Torialli’s life, she became his most useful possession; and she accepted her position gracefully, and turned it as she did all the other facts of life—to her own advantage.
“Thank you, Madame,” said Jean simply.
“Voyons,” she said, laughing a little, and even blushing through the careful enamelling of her face. “Even old women have in their hearts a corner where they like to play the young girl! Let us return again to our discussion. Your great actress gave you an admirable lesson; the lessons of bad women are often more efficacious than the lessons of good ones. They have a great advantage over the rest of us, for they force you to accept the moral while they have none of the onus of suggesting it to you. For the rest, your poor little friend charms me greatly; for her you must be very careful, my dear boy. She saved you from marrying her, and you in return must save her from failing to marry—the nice young grocer round the corner.”