"Oh, not now," she would say gravely. "I know that if I lost it it
would be the same to us both, now; but you can't make me believe that,
at first, when you used to lean over the terrace of the Luxembourg and
wait patiently for hours just to see me walk out of the Odeon."
"I didn't," I would always explain; "I was there by accident."
"Oh, what a funny accident to happen every day for two months!"
"Stop teasing! Of course, after the first week----"
"And what a funny accident that I should pass the same way every day
for two months, when before I always went by the Rue de Seine!"
There was once such an accident, and such a girl. I never knew her; she
is dead. I wondered sometimes that Sweetheart knew, and believed it was
she herself. Yet the other woman's shadow was black.
Sweetheart had a most peculiar and unworldly habit of not embellishing
facts. She presently displayed it when we arrived at the Hôtel Lion
d'Or.
"Jack," said she nervously, "the cinders have made your face
unpleasant. I am ashamed. They may not believe you are my husband."
"As monsieur and madame," I said, "we may have dirty faces and be
honest."
"Do you suppose they--they will believe it? These queer people----"
"They'd better!" I said fiercely.
"I--I hadn't thought of that," she said. "You see, in our own little
place in Paris everybody knew it, but here----"
I said, "Dearest, what nonsense!" and we marched unceremoniously up
to the register, where I wrote our names. Then, with a hasty little
squeeze of her gloved hand, she turned to the maid and tripped off to
inspect our quarters. While I was pumping the fat-headed old proprietor
about the trout fishing in the vicinity, the maid returned with the
request that I mount to the room above. I followed her along the tiled
passages and found Sweetheart sitting on a trunk.
"It's charming! charming!" she said. "Just look at the roses outside,
and the square, and the river! and oh, Jack, the funny little Breton
cattle, and the old man with knee-breeches! It's charming! and"--here
she caught sight of the enraptured and fascinated maid--"and you are
charming, with your red cheeks and white coiffe," she said. "Oh, how
pretty!"
"Oh, madame!" murmured the servant in dire confusion.
I said, "Dearest, that will do. Nobody speaks of my peculiar charms,
and I wish to be noticed."
The presence of the maid prevented Sweetheart from making amends, so we
told her we were satisfied, and we would spare her life if she prepared
breakfast in seventeen seconds.
She accepted the gift of existence with a dazed courtsey, and vanished.
It was refreshing to get hold of a sponge and cold water after fourteen
hours in a cramped compartment. Hunger drove us to hurry--a thing we
rarely did in the morning--and the way we splashed cold water about
would have been fatal to any but a tiled floor.
"Dear," I said, "you have not yet seen me in my Tyrolese knickerbockers
and beautiful shooting jacket. You have never beheld my legs clothed in
Tyrolese stockings, at twenty francs a pair."
"The legs?" she inquired from the depths of a bath robe.
I ignored the question, and parted my hair with care. Then I sat down
on the window and whistled.
Of course I was ready first. Sweetheart's hair had got into a tangle
and needed to be all combed out.
"Oh, I know you are impatient, because you're whistling the Chant du
Départ," she said from the door of her toilet room.
"As usual," I said, "I am ready first."
"If you say that again----" she threatened.
I said it, and dodged a sponge. Presently I was requested to open the
trunk and select a gown for her. Dear little Sweetheart! she loved
to pretend that she had so many it needed long consultation to decide
which.
"The dark blue?" I inquired.
"Don't you think it is too warm?"
"The pale blue, then--or the pink and white?"
"Why not the white, with the cuffs à l'Anglaise, and the canoe hat?"