Madame looked at her searchingly, with shrewd black eyes under her arched eyebrows.
“How!” she exclaimed. “How don’t they? You are not bad looking, only a little too thin—too haggard—”
She watched Alvina. Alvina laughed uncomfortably.
“Is there nobody?” persisted Madame.
“Not now,” said Alvina. “Absolutely nobody.” She looked with a confused laugh into Madame’s strict black eyes. “You see I didn’t care for the Woodhouse young men, either. I couldn’t.”
Madame nodded slowly up and down. A secret satisfaction came over her pallid, waxy countenance, in which her black eyes were like twin swift extraneous creatures: oddly like two bright little dark animals in the snow.
“Sure!” she said, sapient. “Sure! How could you? But there are other men besides these here—” She waved her hand to the window.
“I don’t meet them, do I?” said Alvina.
“No, not often. But sometimes! sometimes!”
There was a silence between the two women, very pregnant.
“Englishwomen,” said Madame, “are so practical. Why are they?”
“I suppose they can’t help it,” said Alvina. “But they’re not half so practical and clever as you, Madame.”
“Oh la—la! I am practical differently. I am practical impractically—” she stumbled over the words. “But your Sue now, in Jude the Obscure—is it not an interesting book? And is she not always too practically practical. If she had been impractically practical she could have been quite happy. Do you know what I mean?—no. But she is ridiculous. Sue: so Anna Karénine. Ridiculous both. Don’t you think?”
“Why?” said Alvina.
“Why did they both make everybody unhappy, when they had the man they wanted, and enough money? I think they are both so silly. If they had been beaten, they would have lost all their practical ideas and troubles, merely forgot them, and been happy enough. I am a woman who says it. Such ideas they have are not tragical. No, not at all. They are nonsense, you see, nonsense. That is all. Nonsense. Sue and Anna, they are—nonsensical. That is all. No tragedy whatsoever. Nonsense. I am a woman. I know men also. And I know nonsense when I see it. Englishwomen are all nonsense: the worst women in the world for nonsense.”
“Well, I am English,” said Alvina.
“Yes, my dear, you are English. But you are not necessarily so nonsensical. Why are you at all?”
“Nonsensical?” laughed Alvina. “But I don’t know what you call my nonsense.”
“Ah,” said Madame wearily. “They never understand. But I like you, my dear. I am an old woman—”
“Younger than I,” said Alvina.
“Younger than you, because I am practical from the heart, and not only from the head. You are not practical from the heart. And yet you have a heart.”
“But all Englishwomen have good hearts,” protested Alvina.
“No! No!” objected Madame. “They are all ve‑ry kind, and ve‑ry practical with their kindness. But they have no heart in all their kindness. It is all head, all head: the kindness of the head.”
“I can’t agree with you,” said Alvina.
“No. No. I don’t expect it. But I don’t mind. You are very kind to me, and I thank you. But it is from the head, you see. And so I thank you from the head. From the heart—no.”
Madame plucked her white fingers together and laid them on her breast with a gesture of repudiation. Her black eyes stared spitefully.
“But Madame,” said Alvina, nettled, “I should never be half such a good business woman as you. Isn’t that from the head?”
“Ha! of course! Of course you wouldn’t be a good business woman. Because you are kind from the head. I—” she tapped her forehead and shook her head—“I am not kind from the head. From the head I am businesswoman, good businesswoman. Of course I am a good businesswoman—of course! But—” here she changed her expression, widened her eyes, and laid her hand on her breast—“when the heart speaks—then I listen with the heart. I do not listen with the head. The heart hears the heart. The head—that is another thing. But you have blue eyes, you cannot understand. Only dark eyes—” She paused and mused.
“And what about yellow eyes?” asked Alvina, laughing.
Madame darted a look at her, her lips curling with a very faint, fine smile of derision. Yet for the first time her black eyes dilated and became warm.
“Yellow eyes like Ciccio’s?” she said, with her great watchful eyes and her smiling, subtle mouth. “They are the darkest of all.” And she shook her head roguishly.
“Are they!” said Alvina confusedly, feeling a blush burning up her throat into her face.
“Ha—ha!” laughed Madame. “Ha-ha! I am an old woman, you see. My heart is old enough to be kind, and my head is old enough to be clever. My heart is kind to few people—very few—especially in this England. My young men know that. But perhaps to you it is kind.”
“Thank you,” said Alvina.
“There! From the head Thank you. It is not well done, you see. You see!”
But Alvina ran away in confusion. She felt Madame was having her on a string.
Mr. May enjoyed himself hugely playing Kishwégin. When Madame came downstairs Louis, who was a good satirical mimic, imitated him. Alvina happened to come into their sitting-room in the midst of their bursts of laughter. They all stopped and looked at her cautiously.
“Continuez! Continuez!” said Madame to Louis. And to Alvina: “Sit down, my dear, and see what a good actor we have in our Louis.”
Louis glanced round, laid his head a little on one side and drew in his chin, with Mr. May’s smirk exactly, and wagging his tail slightly, he commenced to play the false Kishwégin. He sidled and bridled and ejaculated with raised hands, and in the dumb show the tall Frenchman made such a ludicrous caricature of Mr. Houghton’s manager that Madame wept again with laughter, whilst Max leaned back against the wall and giggled continuously like some pot involuntarily boiling. Geoffrey spread his shut fists across the table and shouted with laughter, Ciccio threw back his head and showed all his teeth in a loud laugh of delighted
