But these thoughts led her nowhere, for Mademoiselle Duphot was quite unacquainted with the bypaths of nature. Her innocent mind was untutored and trustful; she believed in the legend of Adam and Eve, and no careless mistakes had been made in their garden!
4
The apartment in the Avenue de la Grande Armée was as tidy as Valérie’s had been untidy. From the miniature kitchen to the miniature salon, everything shone as though recently polished, for here in spite of restricted finances, no dust was allowed to harbour.
Mademoiselle Duphot beamed on her guests as she herself opened the door to admit them. ‘For me this is very real joy,’ she declared. Then she introduced them to her sister Julie, whose eyes were hidden behind dark glasses.
The salon was literally stuffed with what Mademoiselle had described as her ‘treasures.’ On its tables were innumerable useless objects which appeared for the most part, to be mementoes. Coloured prints of Bouguereaus hung on the walls, while the chairs were upholstered in a species of velvet so hard as to be rather slippery to sit on, yet that when it was touched felt rough to the fingers. The woodwork of these inhospitable chairs had been coated with varnish until it looked sticky. Over the little inadequate fireplace smiled a portrait of Maman when she was quite young. Maman, dressed in tartan for some strange reason, but in tartan that had never hob-nobbed with the Highlands—a present this portrait had been from a cousin who had wished to become an artist.
Julie extended a white, groping hand. She was like her sister only very much thinner, and her face had the closed rather blank expression that is sometimes associated with blindness.
‘Which is Stévenne?’ she inquired in an anxious voice; ‘I have heard so much about Stévenne!’
Stephen said: ‘Here I am,’ and she grasped the hand, pitiful of this woman’s affliction.
But Julie smiled broadly. ‘Yes, I know it is you from the feel,’—she had started to stroke Stephen’s coat-sleeve—‘my eyes have gone into my fingers these days. It is strange, but I seem to see through my fingers.’ Then she turned and found Puddle whom she also stroked. ‘And now I know both of you,’ declared Julie.
The tea when it came was that straw-coloured liquid which may even now be met with in Paris.