“De la par du Docteur Mastaire,” said the telephone this time, and there was that captain of men muttering, as he had promised he would in return for my playing bridge till all hours for his sake, that there was little change in Iris, but what little was for the better rather than for the worse. “But don’t go thinking,” said he sharply enough, “that she’s nearly out of the wood yet, because she isn’t. And, by the way, she seems to want to see you, but remember that you’ll do her the worst turn you can if you let that boy leave Paris today.”
“Yes, but,” I said, but I spoke only to the roar of the Parisian scene, and I thought: “Oh, well! He isn’t going till the evening anyhow.” And, still keeping my mind from dwelling on death and dark enchantments, I renewed my decision to stay in Paris a while, no matter how bitterly my sister might inveigh against me for letting her return to England unaccompanied. By now the rue de la Paix was languishing brilliantly in the stormy sunlight, and from my bath I could glimpse the cars lounging up and down and women walking swiftly by, intent on errands of the greatest importance and looking as attractive as only women can look when they are not thinking of men, while Englishmen and Americans walked seriously toward the chairs on the boulevards that they had read about in Nash’s Magazine. Then my sister’s car passed by towards the Place de l’Opera, and she sitting forward with an air of moment, the ferrule of her parasol poised above the shoulder of the chauffeur, poor Mr. Hebblethwaite, who hated the French so! “I will tell her,” I said, “that I am regrettably detained in Paris owing to the call of my art, my Work, for I have just thought of a tale about a man who would not dance with his wife, and would you have me, I will put to her frankly, write a tale like that in a London fog?”
And it was while debating with myself over this silly fancy about a man who would not dance with his wife, for some good reason that I would no doubt hit upon in due course, and while congratulating myself that I had throughout the morning successfully avoided thinking of any of my friends’ troubles, that I passed through the soft-carpeted and sombre halls of the Meurice, towards Venice, towards Venice, where she sat in a deep chair behind a paper, while in deep chairs all around sat people drinking cocktails and talking in low voices. All people talk in low voices when in the Meurice, and that, I dare venture to say, is one of the amenities peculiar to the Meurice among the hotels of all the world; but that is as it may be.
II
Venice was in high looks that day, Venice was all of a glitter, and that was because, she said at first, of this and that. But we had no sooner passed through the glass doors into the restaurant than she said, she almost cried, that something marvellous had happened just a moment before. “What do you think?” she dared me to guess, and when I said that I thought I would have some oysters she said she was too excited to eat anything, but might she have some ham and a glass of lager beer?
Venice hadn’t met my sister but once or twice, but they had met again that morning in some shop or other, “and I was complaining bitterly,” said Venice, “about Napier, how he made a perfect jumble of everything by never knowing his own mind for two minutes running, and how we couldn’t now find any sleepers in tonight’s train—when she offered to lend us her car to take us to Monte Carlo! She couldn’t bear the sight of it, she said, for another week at least, and that gives us plenty of time to get there and send it back, doesn’t it? Now fancy your having a sister like that!”
“And how is Napier?” I asked. “I only saw him for a moment. …”
“I can tell you,” said Venice in a sudden sombre moment, “that I’m not a bit sorry to be leaving Paris as quick as quick. Naps has been working awfully hard lately, and here we come away for a holiday and the first thing he does is to go off the deep end about this old friend of his being ill.”
“Well, she is rather ill,” I said.
“Yes, I’m awfully sorry, really I am. I’ve never met her, but I saw her once, one night at the Loyalty just before my—”
“Yes, I remember, Venice.”
“And I thought she was the most lovely woman I’d ever seen, and rather sad-looking, which made her lovelier than ever. She’d be sad, I suppose, because of her two husbands and the things people say about her; for they do say some things, don’t they?”
“They! They, Venice, will say anything. …”
“Yes, of course, but you know what I mean. And Naps, you see, can’t bear anyone to be ill and miserable, and I’m sure he’s got an idea that Mrs. Storm is lonely up there, but really, I think, he might consider himself a little, don’t you? And so I ordered the car at three o’clock this afternoon, and off we’ll go. He’ll be surprised when he gets here. …”
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose he
