“Then, while mademoiselle and Chames Stuart sip their coffee, madame speaks to him severely. I understand but meagerly English, m’sieu knows, I attrap a word here and there—of girls and student balls and the gay life of the Quartier that has embroiled Monsieur Roger. Truly, m’sieu, he has always seemed to me a brave young man, ce beau garçon, not at all a mean young man or of mauvais sang, like some who come here; but he has been young, parbleu! The saints be thanked, he has been young. Yet with that does Madame reproach him, in low tones. Monsieur Roger’s mother, madame says, has heard of his follies but too often; her heart is broken. ‘Nor can your success repair it,’ adds madame with harshness. ‘All Baltimore knows of your wild affairs and your mother’s shame.’ M’sieu, I do not know who is this Baltimore, but I think he must be droll, if he is shocked at Monsieur Roger’s folies de jeunesse. N’est ce pas? But certainly, m’sieu—the omelette!”
When he had brought it, “M’sieu does not ennui himself? M’sieu permits that I go on?”
“Go on,” I said—looking at the wide blue eyes of the girl in the orangier opposite.
“That evening passes itself. I do not know why, mademoiselle—the blush once gone—looks pale and distraite. She speaks quite gay and very fast, yet—why she is sad one can but imagine. This Chames Stuart, he is scarcely of a beauty, hein? A beauty like Monsieur Roger with his black hair and his gay smile and his figure like—Dame! But I am foolish for Monsieur Roger, all the Café knows. And he, what does he do? He says good-night with empressement, formally, and hopes he may have the pleasure of seeing these ladies again very soon. With Chames Stuart he shakes hands—yet more formally. They separate.
“Second chapter, it is—what do you think, m’sieu? Mademoiselle and Monsieur Roger alone! But of a surety! They come in one warm afternoon and order tea—but they come inside and far over in one corner, and mademoiselle glances about, nervously and says, ‘Oh, Roger, it is rash! It is wrong—I ought not to have come.’ But he soothes her—Mon Dieu: what a voice: what strength—what tenderness divine! The emotion a young girl must feel for him—one can but imagine—he soothes her and tells her it was of a necessity for him, this little hour alone with her.
“‘For I was to have married you, Julie, you know,’ he says sadly. ‘Our mothers planned it when you were a little girl in—how you say, m’sieu? pinafore? and I a clumsy boy in knickers. Have you forgotten?’
“‘No,’ says mademoiselle with a little sigh; ‘but—they say you did. They say—mamma and your mother too—that you forgot everything but what you should have forgotten; that you flung your name and the reputation of your family to the four winds, and cared for nothing but pleasure!—and dissipation and mad gaieties. They say!' mademoiselle tells him with a break in her lovely voice, ‘that you aren’t fit to marry a young girl—that you would break her heart.’
“Monsieur Roger cursed—softly, under his breath. But I, m’sieu, heard him.
“‘Idiots!’ he mutters between his teeth. ‘Fools—prurient-minded canaille!—to fill a child’s head with such drivel. But it’s dangerous drivel.’ He turns to mademoiselle.—‘Listen, Julie,’ he says with what gentleness, ‘Americans have different ideas from ours over here. They lead the same lives,’ says Monsieur Roger bitterly, ‘but they have different ideas about those lives. They take trouble to conceal. Here in Paris, one lives as one lives,—openly. One is ashamed of nothing,—except meanness. I,’ says Monsieur Roger proudly, ‘am ashamed of nothing. I have been foolish, yes! wild. Did I not come here, a boy of twenty-one, from my mother and Baltimore (I wonder what is this Baltimore, m’sieu?), from all the stupid conventions of a society that is nothing but afraid? Of course I was wild; and the people we know, who came to Paris, would go back with great tales of my escapades.’
“Monsieur Roger folds his arms suddenly. ‘Julie,’ he says with earnestness, ‘I am ready to tell you anything—answer any question you may care to put, about my life here in Paris.’