a pulsating silence toward the French doors, down the cool stone steps into the velvet dark of the garden, and the white of her gown merged with the dark cloth of his coat and there was only the soft tinkle of the litde fountain. In the bedroom the gaunt figure of Kaka was silhouetted against the light as she made her mistress’s room ready for the night.
VI
Just as she had inherited all that remained of her mother’s magnificent Rue de la Paix jewelry, just as her mother’s exquisite Paris gowns fitted her as well as her own frocks, so Clio Dulaine had been bequeathed other valuables of courtesanship less tangible but equally important. Now, in the Rampart Street house, she slipped fluidly into the way of life that had been Rita Dulaine’s many years before. But with a difference. There was an iron quality in this girl that the other woman never had possessed.
From her lovely languorous mother and from her hearty jovial aunt Clio had early learned the art of being charming to everyone. A trick of the socially insecure, yet there was nothing servile about it. Clio had seen Rita Dulaine’s poignant smile and wistful charm turned upon the musty old concierge as he opened the courtyard door of the Paris flat. The same smile and equal charm had been bestowed upon any man numbered among her few Paris acquaintances whom she might encounter on her rare visits to the opera or while driving in the Bois. Her graciousness was partly due, doubtless, to the inherent good nature of a woman who has been beautiful and beloved for years; partly to the fact that gracious charm was a necessary equipment of the born courtesan.
So, then, the manner of the girl Clio Dulaine stemmed from a combination of causes: unconscious imitation of the two women she most loved and admired; observation, training, habit, innate shrewdness. She had, too, something of her buxon aunt’s lusty good humor; much of her mother’s sultry enchantment.
Without effort, without a conscious thought to motivate it, Clio had turned the same warm, personal smile on the waiter Léon and on Monsieur Hippolyte Begué; on the painters and glaziers who had smartened the Rampart Street house; on Clint Maroon.
The relation between these two, begun as a flirtation, had, in two weeks, taken on a serious depth and complexity. Though so strongly drawn together there was, too, a definite sex antagonism between them. Each had a plan of life selfishly devised, though vague. Each felt the fear of the other’s power to change that plan. Each, curiously enough, nourished a deep resentment against the world that had hurt someone dear to them. Hers was a sophisticated viewpoint, for all her youth and inexperience; his a naïve one, for all his masculinity and dare-devil past. Cautiously at first, then in a flood that burst the dam of caution and reticence, the two had confided to each other the details of their lives. Through long lazy afternoons, through hot sultry nights each knew the relief that comes of confidences exchanged, of sympathies expressed, of festering grievances long hidden brought now to light and cleansed by exposure. Adventurers, both, bent on cracking the shell of the world that was to be their oyster.
Though they did not know it, they were like two people who, searching for buried treasure, are caught in a quicksand. Every struggle to extricate themselves only made them sink deeper.
She had never met anyone like this dashing and slightly improbable figure who seemed to have stepped out of the pages of fiction.
“Tell me, the men in Texas, are they all like you?”
“Only the bad ones.”
“You’re not bad. You’re only mad at the world. You are like someone in a story book. When we lived in Paris I read the stories of Bret Harte. Do you know him? He is wonderful.”
“No. Who’s he?”
“Oh, what a great stupid boy! He is a famous American writer. His story-book men carry a pistol, too, like you, at the hip. I don’t like pistols. They make me
VI
Just as she had inherited all that remained of her mother’s magnificent Rue de la Paix jewelry, just as her mother’s exquisite Paris gowns fitted her as well as her own frocks, so Clio Dulaine had been bequeathed other valuables of courtesanship less tangible but equally important. Now, in the Rampart Street house, she slipped fluidly into the way of life that had been Rita Dulaine’s many years before. But with a difference. There was an iron quality in this girl that the other woman never had possessed.
From her lovely languorous mother and from her hearty jovial aunt Clio had early learned the art of being charming to everyone. A trick of the socially insecure, yet there was nothing servile about it. Clio had seen Rita Dulaine’s poignant smile and wistful charm turned upon the musty old concierge as he opened the courtyard door of the Paris flat. The same smile and equal charm had been bestowed upon any man numbered among her few Paris acquaintances whom she might encounter on her rare visits to the opera or while driving in the Bois. Her graciousness was partly due, doubtless, to the inherent good nature of a woman who has been beautiful and beloved for years; partly to the fact that gracious charm was a necessary equipment of the born courtesan.
So, then, the manner of the girl Clio Dulaine stemmed from a combination of causes: unconscious imitation of the two women she most loved and admired; observation, training, habit, innate shrewdness. She had, too, something of her buxon aunt’s lusty good humor; much of her mother’s sultry enchantment.
Without effort, without a conscious thought to motivate it, Clio had turned the same warm, personal smile on the waiter Léon and on Monsieur Hippolyte Begué; on the painters and glaziers who had smartened the Rampart Street house; on Clint Maroon.
The relation between these two, begun as a flirtation, had, in two weeks, taken on a serious depth and complexity. Though so strongly drawn together there was, too, a definite sex antagonism between them. Each had a plan of life selfishly devised, though vague. Each felt the fear of the other’s power to change that plan. Each, curiously enough, nourished a deep resentment against the world that had hurt someone dear to them. Hers was a sophisticated viewpoint, for all her youth and inexperience; his a naïve one, for all his masculinity and dare-devil past. Cautiously at first, then in a flood that burst the dam of caution and reticence, the two had confided to each other the details of their lives. Through long lazy afternoons, through hot sultry nights each knew the relief that comes of confidences exchanged, of sympathies expressed, of festering grievances long hidden brought now to light and cleansed by exposure. Adventurers, both, bent on cracking the shell of the world that was to be their oyster.
Though they did not know it, they were like two people who, searching for buried treasure, are caught in a quicksand. Every struggle to extricate themselves only made them sink deeper.
She had never met anyone like this dashing and slightly improbable figure who seemed to have stepped out of the pages of fiction.
“Tell me, the men in Texas, are they all like you?”
“Only the bad ones.”
“You’re not bad. You’re only mad at the world. You are like someone in a story book. When we lived in Paris I read the stories of Bret Harte. Do you know him? He is wonderful.”
“No. Who’s he?”
“Oh, what a great stupid boy! He is a famous American writer. His story-book men carry a pistol, too, like you, at the hip. I don’t like pistols. They make me
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