I
They were walking home from the theatre.
'Well, Mr White,' said Valentia, 'I think it was just fine.'
'It was magnificent!' replied Mr White.
And they were separated for a moment by the crowd, streaming up from the
Francais towards the Opera and the Boulevards.
'I think, if you don't mind,' she said, 'I'll take your arm, so that we
shouldn't get lost.'
He gave her his arm, and they walked through the Louvre and over the
river on their way to the Latin Quarter.
Valentia was an art student and Ferdinand White was a poet. Ferdinand
considered Valentia the only woman who had ever been able to paint, and
Valentia told Ferdinand that he was the only man she had met who knew
anything about Art without being himself an artist. On her arrival in
Paris, a year before, she had immediately inscribed herself, at the
offices of the _New York Herald_, Valentia Stewart, Cincinnati, Ohio,
U.S.A. She settled down in a respectable _pension_, and within a week
was painting vigorously. Ferdinand White arrived from Oxford at about
the same time, hired a dirty room in a shabby hotel, ate his meals at
cheap restaurants in the Boulevard St Michel, read Stephen Mallarme, and
flattered himself that he was leading '_la vie de Boheme_.'
After two months, the Fates brought the pair together, and Ferdinand
began to take his meals at Valentia's _pension_. They went to the
museums together; and in the Sculpture Gallery at the Louvre, Ferdinand
would discourse on ancient Greece in general and on Plato in particular,
while among the pictures Valentia would lecture on tones and values and
chiaroscuro. Ferdinand renounced Ruskin and all his works; Valentia read
the Symposium. Frequently in the evening they went to the theatre;
sometimes to the Francais, but more often to the Odeon; and after the
performance they would discuss the play, its art, its technique--above
all, its ethics. Ferdinand explained the piece he had in contemplation,
and Valentia talked of the picture she meant to paint for next year's
Salon; and the lady told her friends that her companion was the
cleverest man she had met in her life, while he told his that she was
the only really sympathetic and intelligent girl he had ever known. Thus
were united in bonds of amity, Great Britain on the one side and the
United States of America and Ireland on the other.
But when Ferdinand spoke of Valentia to the few Frenchmen he knew, they
asked him,--
'But this Miss Stewart--is she pretty?'
'Certainly--in her American way; a long face, with the hair parted in
the middle and hanging over the nape of the neck. Her mouth is quite
classic.'
'And have you never kissed the classic mouth?'
'I? Never!'
'Has she a good figure?'
'Admirable!'
'And yet--Oh, you English!' And they smiled and shrugged their shoulders
as they said, 'How English!'
'But, my good fellow,' cried Ferdinand, in execrable French, 'you don't
understand. We are friends, the best of friends.'
They shrugged their shoulders more despairingly than ever.