“You shall know nothing about it! As for me, I care nothing about it. I’d do it again to-night! That is living—to go forward, laugh, and accept what comes—to have heart enough, gaiety enough, brains enough to seize the few rare dispensations that the niggardly gods fling across this calvary which we call life! Tenez, that alone is living; the rest is making the endless stations on bleeding knees.”
“Yet, if I thought—” he began, perplexed and troubled, “—if I thought that through my folly——”
“Folly! Non pas! Wisdom! Oh, my blessed accomplice! And do you remember the canoe? Were we indeed quite mad to embark for Paris on the moonlit Seine, you and I?—I in evening gown, soaked with dew to the knees!—you with your sketching block and easel! Quelle déménagement en famille! Oh, Garry, my friend of gayer days, was that really folly! No, no, no, it was infinite wisdom; and its memory is helping me to live through this very moment!”
She leaned there on her elbows and laughed across the cloth at him. The mockery began to dance again and glimmer in her eyes:
“After all I’ve told you,” she added, “you are no wiser, are you? You don’t know why I never went to the Fountain of Marie de Médicis—whether I forgot to go—whether I remembered but decided that I had had quite enough of you. You don’t know, do you?”
He shook his head, smiling. The girl’s face grew gradually serious:
“And you never heard anything more about me?” she demanded.
“No. Your name simply disappeared from the billboards, kiosques, and newspapers.”
“And you heard no malicious gossip? None about my sister, either?”