She began to feel that if she had married Forbes and made her own clothes she could not have grown wearier than she grew from putting on and taking off the complicated harnesses devised by intoxicated dressmakers.
Sometimes she declared that she would rather trim one bonnet and wear it the rest of her life than try on any more of the works of the mad hatters of Europe.
And what mockery her splendor was!—for the ulterior purpose of gorgeousness is love. Humanity has stretched its mating season throughout the whole year, but the meaning of bright plumage remains an invitation to courtship, a more or less disguised advertisement: "Behold, I am ready. I am desirable!"
Persis was dressing herself up for yesterday's party. Men courted her still, slyly and disgustingly, but she felt herself insulted by the adventure, degraded by the implications. Whatever other faults she had, Persis was not promiscuous. There was nothing of the female rake in her nature. She was meant to be loved by many and to love one. Her heart had selected its one among the ones; but the hand had married elsewhere. There was great danger for her soul if she did not meet that One. And greater danger if she did.
CHAPTER LIV
PARIS and London were like two rival circuses bidding for the public, beating tom-toms, blowing horns, and sending out band-wagons and parades. While Persis was wearying of the English side-shows, Forbes was tiring of the French. The wounds Persis had inflicted on his heart and his pride were still fresh and bleeding. The fever had not left him. At the thought of her, or the sight of her name frequently in the daily papers, or her portrait in the illustrated papers, the scarlet shame of his defeat still ran across his brow, still the hunger for her gripped him, regret sickened him.
Senator Tait had not enjoyed the progress of his conspiracy. For secretary he had taken Stowe Webb, who moved about like an immature Hamlet with a heart draped in black. For military attaché he had brought Forbes, whose thoughts flew backward to the past instead of scouting ahead. For acting ambassadress he had brought a daughter who, though torn away from her New York charities, found new miseries to engage her everywhere. Even on the ship she had sought distress—in the stokehold, in the steerage and the second cabin. Instead of holding hands in moonlit nooks and funnel-corners, she was taking up purses, sterilizing milk for sick babies, and selling tickets for a benefit concert.
Forbes admired Mildred profoundly, but he preferred his own sorrows to the woes she discovered in other people. Mildred liked Forbes immensely, in a motherly, elder-sisterly, trained-nursish way. But of love between them there was no visible trace.
Tait grew fonder and fonder of Forbes as a son, but he could not contrive him as a son-in-law. The mating of human hearts, he found, was a task beyond diplomacy or politics. He wondered if he would have more success in promoting affection between America and France, the two republics that made each other possible. He wished that he had never undertaken any of his tasks. He felt old, ill, tired. He had agreed to take over the Embassy on the fifth of July. Hardly more than a week remained of his freedom, and that week was the big week of the year—the grande semaine.