“All right,” he said, smiling at her naive assumptions. “I won’t ask you to marry me—at least not yet. But I’m coming over just the same. I don’t suppose you’ve got a lien on Paris.”
“Of course I haven’t,” she giggled a little. “You know perfectly well I want you to come.” Her face suddenly became grave. “But if you do come you won’t come to make love without meaning anything either, will you? I’d hate that between you and me.”
“No,” he said gently, instantly comprehending. “I won’t do that either.”
“You’ll come as a friend?”
“Yes, as a friend.”
A deck hand came up then and said civilly that in a few minutes they would be casting off and all visitors must go ashore.
III
Among her steamer-letters was a brief note from Anthony:
“Angela, my angel, my dear girl, goodbye. These last few weeks have been heaven and hell. I couldn’t bear to see you go—so I’ve taken myself off for a few hours … don’t think I’ll neglect Jinny. I’ll never do that. Am I right in supposing that you still care a little? Oh Angela, try to forget me—but don’t do it! I shall never forget you!”
There were letters and flowers from the Burdens, gifts of all sorts from Ashley and Mrs. Denver, a set of notes for each day out from Virginia. She read letters, examined her gifts and laid them aside. But all day long Anthony’s note reposed on her heart; it lay at night beneath her head.
Paris at first charmed and wooed her. For a while it seemed to her that her old sense of joy in living for living’s sake had returned to her. It was like those first few days which she had spent in exploring New York. She rode delightedly in the motorbuses on and on to the unknown, unpredictable terminus; she followed the winding Seine; crossing and re-crossing the bridges each with its distinctive characteristics. Back of the Panthéon, near the church of St. Geneviève she discovered a Russian restaurant where strange, exotic dishes were served by tall blond waiters in white, stiff Russian blouses. One day, wandering up the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse, she found at its juncture with the Boulevard Raspail the Café Dome, a student restaurant of which many returned students had spoken in the Art School in New York. On entering she was recognized almost immediately by Edith Martin, a girl who had studied with her in Philadelphia.
Miss Martin had lived in Paris two years; knew all the gossip and the characters of the Quarter; could give Angela points on pensions, cafés, tips and the Gallic disposition. On all these topics she poured out perpetually a flood of information, presented her friends, summoned the newcomer constantly to her studio or camped uninvited in the other girl’s tiny quarters at the Pension Franciana. There was no chance for actual physical loneliness, yet Angela thought after a few weeks of persistent comradeship that she had never felt so lonely in her life. For the first time in her adventuresome existence she was caught up in a tide of homesickness.
Then this passed too with the summer, and she found herself by the end of September engrossed in her work. She went to the Academy twice a day, immersed herself in the atmosphere of the Louvre and the gallery of the Luxembourg. It was hard work, but gradually she schooled herself to remember that this was her life, and that her aim, her one ambition, was to become an acknowledged, a significant painter of portraits. The instructor, renowned son of a still more renowned father, almost invariably praised her efforts.
With the coming of the fall the sense of adventure left her. Paris, so beautiful in the summer, so gay with its thronging thousands, its hosts bent on pleasure, took on another garb in the sullen greyness of late autumn. The tourists disappeared and the hard steady grind of labour, the intent application to the business of living, so noticeable in the French, took the place of a transient, careless freedom. Angela felt herself falling into line; but it was good discipline as she herself realized. Once or twice, in periods of utter loneliness or boredom, she let her mind dwell on her curiously thwarted and twisted life. But the ability for self-pity had vanished. She had known too many others whose lives lay equally remote from goals which had at first seemed so certain. For a period she had watched feverishly for the incoming of foreign mail, sure that some word must come from Virginia about Matthew, but the months crept sullenly by and Jinny’s letters remained the same artless missives prattling of schoolwork, Anthony, Sara Penton, the movies and visits to Maude the inimitable.
“Of course not everything can come right,” she told herself. Matthew evidently had, on second thought, deemed it wisest to consult the evidence of his own senses rather than be guided by the hints which in the nature of things she could offer only vaguely.
Within those six months she lost forever the blind optimism of youth. She did not write Anthony nor did she hear from him.
Christmas Eve day dawned or rather drifted greyly into the beholder’s perception out of the black mistiness of the murky night. In spite of herself her spirits sank steadily. Virginia had promised her a present—“I’ve looked all over this whole town,” she wrote, “to find you something good enough, something absolutely perfect. Anthony’s been helping me. And at last I’ve found it. We’ve taken every possible precaution against the interference of wind or rain or weather, and unless something absolutely unpredictable intervenes, it will be there for you Christmas Eve or possibly the day before. But remember, don’t open until Christmas.”
But it was now six o’clock on Christmas Eve and no present had come, no letter, no remembrance of any kind. “Oh,” she said to herself “what a fool I was to come so far away from home!” For a moment she envisaged the
