Anne's lashes fluttered. "Why don't you ask her?" she challenged.
He shrugged his shoulders. "I feel weak in the knees when I think of
it," he said, "for fear she might say 'no'."
"Faint heart," I murmured, but no one paid any attention to me.
It seemed to me, after that, as if some of the brightness had gone
out of Elizabeth's face. But Anne fairly scintillated. And she was
exceedingly amiable to Elizabeth.
"Ask the count first," I heard her say, "he's simply charming."
Elizabeth flung up her head in a quick way. She was all in sheer pale
yellow, bordered with daffodils, and there was a twist of gold ribbon
in her fair hair. Only extreme youth could have worn it, and, as she
flashed her answer back to Anne, I had never seen her more beautiful.
"The count wouldn't have me as a precious gift," she said. "I'm too
crude. He likes a more finished product--like you, dear Mrs. Beaumont."
"Now, what do you suppose she meant by that?" said Anne that night,
when we were in our kimonos and were comforting our complexions with
cold cream. "Do you think she meant it for a compliment, or was it a
reflection on my age?"
"No one can reflect on your age," I told her. "Nobody knows it but
Charlemagne and me, and we won't tell."
"That's the advantage of living on the other side and coming back to
meet the younger generation," said Anne; "they haven't kept tab on the
years."
She got up and moved restlessly about the room. With the cream on her
face and with her hair down, she looked old, and I had a vision of
Elizabeth in the yellow gown.
Perhaps something of my thought showed, for Anne stopped suddenly and
gazed into a long mirror set in the door. "Oh, youth, youth, Sophie,"
she cried.
"Anne," I said, "come away from that mirror. No one can be beautiful
with her face full of cold cream."
She laughed and dropped down on the rug in front of me, and after a
while she said, "Did you hear what he said to-night?"
"About wishing a certain woman would ask him?"
"Yes. He will never ask me, Sophie. He thinks I am still mourning my
husband--he thinks I don't care----"
There wasn't much to be said after that. But before I left her, I
whispered, "Why don't you tell him, Anne?"