She went straight up to the shrieking girl and put her tiny hand on her shoulder. It seemed to Jean as if a miracle had taken place; the girl ceased crying and looked up at her. Madame spoke a few simple words with an air of mingled sympathy and authority, then she turned gracefully away with a laughing comradeship to the group of artists near the door. She left them only to assuage the impatience of others.
She took Pauline’s hand in both of hers, and Jean, to his astonishment, saw Miss Vanderpool’s annoyed sharpness change to a calm serenity.
“To-morrow,” said Madame Torialli, with her grave gentleness, “you will sing at my At Home. Non? It will not be a great affair except for that, ma belle! but it will be our real welcome to Paris—it is what we have been looking forward to, Torialli and I; we shall not ask anyone else to sing. One does not hand apples after peaches. We may count on you then?” And Madame, hardly waiting for Pauline’s quick assent, floated off with Hester Lévi beside her into Torialli’s theatre. Nobody seemed to have any complaints left. The tiny woman with the child-like eyes had carried them away with her as if they were so many decorative flowers.
“She says she’s quite sure there’s been a mistake.” The slender girl confided to Jean whose sympathy she had divined rather than heard. “And she is going to send me a note to-night herself.”
“She is like the East,” said Lucien half to himself, “a land where there is always sunshine and warmth—and secrecy.”
“But don’t you think mystery is the most beautiful thing there is?” ventured Jean. Lucien looked at him for a moment.
“The most beautiful? Yes,” he said at last, “and the most tragic. If you want to be—I don’t say happy, mon cher, I am not guilty of the absurdity of supposing that at your age you want to be that—but if you want to be even tolerably safe—avoid mystery and stick to facts. Facts, it is true, may knock you down, but they let you pick yourself up again. When mystery knocks you down, she has, on the other hand, a little habit of keeping you there. Au revoir, mon ami. La grande Américaine wants you.”
“We go in next,” said Pauline to Jean.
Half an hour later Hester Lévi came out of the theatre as impassively as she had entered it, and Jean found himself following the sweep of Pauline’s train, with a quaking heart. The theatre was empty except for the Toriallis. Madame was leaning against one of the stalls, and looking across the empty spaces with a charming, friendly smile; it was not so much a welcome as a recognition. She looked as if she had been always expecting them with pleasure and without suspense.
“There, my dear,” she said to Torialli who stood near her, “is our grand Pauline.”