As he was hunting for a taxicab, the waiter ran out and told him that he
had forgotten to settle for the wine. The lady had refused to do so.
Courtlandt chuckled and gave him a ten-franc piece. In other days, in
other circumstances, he would have liked to know more about the unknown
who scribbled notes on composition paper. She was not an idler in the Rue
Royale, and it did not require that indefinable intuition which comes of
worldly-wiseness to discover this fact. She might be a friend of the
Desimone woman, but she had stepped out of another sphere to become so. He
recognized the quality that could adjust itself to any environment and
come out scatheless. This was undeniably an American accomplishment; and
yet she was distinctly a Frenchwoman. He dismissed the problem from his
mind and bade the driver go as fast as the police would permit.
Meanwhile the young woman waited five or ten minutes, and, making sure
that Courtlandt had been driven off, left the restaurant. Round the corner
she engaged a carriage. So that was Edward Courtlandt? She liked his face;
there was not a weak line in it, unless stubbornness could be called such.
But to stay away for two years! To hide himself in jungles, to be heard of
only by his harebrained exploits! "Follow him; see where he goes," had
been the command. For a moment she had rebelled, but her curiosity was not
to be denied. Besides, of what use was friendship if not to be tried? She
knew nothing of the riddle, she had never asked a question openly. She had
accidentally seen a photograph one day, in a trunk tray, with this man's
name scrawled across it, and upon this flimsy base she had builded a dozen
romances, each of which she had ruthlessly torn down to make room for
another; but still the riddle lay unsolved. She had thrown the name into
the conversation many a time, as one might throw a bomb into a crowd which
had no chance to escape. Fizzles! The man had been calmly discussed and
calmly dismissed. At odd times an article in the newspapers gave her an
opportunity; still the frank discussion, still the calm dismissal. She had
learned that the man was rich, irresponsible, vacillating, a picturesque
sort of fool. But two years? What had kept him away that long? A weak man,
in love, would not have made so tame a surrender. Perhaps he had not
surrendered; perhaps neither of them had.
And yet, he sought the Calabrian. Here was another blind alley out of
which she had to retrace her steps. Bother! That Puck of Shakespeare was
right: What fools these mortals be! She was very glad that she possessed a
true sense of humor, spiced with harmless audacity. What a dreary world it
must be to those who did not know how and when to laugh! They talked of
the daring of the American woman: who but a Frenchwoman would have dared
what she had this night? The taxicab! She laughed. And this man was wax in
the hands of any pretty woman who came along! So rumor had it. But she
knew that rumor was only the attenuated ghost of Ananias, doomed forever
to remain on earth for the propagation of inaccurate whispers. Wax! Why,
she would have trusted herself in any situation with a man with those eyes
and that angle of jaw. It was all very mystifying. "Follow him; see where
he goes." The frank discussion, then, and the calm dismissal were but a
woman's dissimulation. And he had gone to Flora Desimone's.