“Charmed,” murmured the affable Monsieur Flaubert, holding out a plump pink hand.
Pauline stood stiff, angular, and impenetrable. Then she gave Jean the slightest possible inclination of her head, and turned her back on him; evidently she intended to have no recollection of a former meeting.
Louis Flaubert turned hurriedly away to where the slender little girl in black leaned forward—her bent head raised at last, and her heart in her eyes. He spoke to her rapidly in an undertone. Jean could not catch what he said, but it was enough to look at the girl to guess what had happened. Louis Flaubert was hideously angry, and he had utilized his anger to avoid the strong and attack the weak in the most prudent manner.
The girl tried to speak, her face seemed to grow old and to contract, she held out her trembling hands with a sharp little gesture of appeal. Flaubert bowed and smiled, and retreated almost as quickly as he had come. The girl, who had sat quite still for a moment, gave a loud wild laugh, then another, and then the whole room filled with peal after peal of cruel hysterical laughter. She bent and swayed under it, shrieking with uncontrollable sobs. It seemed to Jean as if he were watching a tree caught in a gale of wind, and flung and twisted here and there by an invisible Torturer. Nobody expressed any surprise at the outburst, one or two people smiled and shrugged their shoulders—a few paused in their conversation and looked slightly uncomfortable.
“For the love of God, can we do nothing to help her?” cried Jean in a fury of disgust and rage. “Where can one get a glass of water?”
The great tenor Lucien D’Arblay smiled at his impetuosity.
“You will have your work set, my dear young man, if you go through the world trying to relieve people—believe me, it is not worth while! She’s just had her dismissal, poor little one! It would take more than a glass of water to cure that. Torialli won’t see her again. I can’t think why Flaubert didn’t write it. He might have known there’d be a row. Ah! here’s Madame!”
The door opened again and Jean, looking up, met the candid innocent blue eyes of a little child gazing into his.
Madame Torialli was any age you like when her eyes were shut, and the thick bisque shadows under them betrayed her struggles with time; but when they were open and yours met them, you found yourself gazing into the fountain of eternal youth.
She was a very small woman who carried her head like a queen. If time had taken away the bloom from her delicate mobile face, it had replaced it by a riper charm which had in it nothing but the sweetness of experience. You could not look at Madame Torialli and remember that the world was hard.