Chapter V: Part 5

“Let it be on the other side of Paris,” said Richard next morning, as he and Grandison left the studio on their way to the station, for he had decided to accompany his friend in order to point out the girl whom he was to meet.

“Everything in France is different,” Anne said to herself as she looked out of the window of the train. “Those trees must be elms, but they have been shaved like French poodles so that they are scarcely recognizable. These are fields of corn, and here are cocks and hens and cart-sheds, but they do not seem to be the real things so much as imitations of ours. And the houses! How extraordinarily different are the houses!” for the train was passing through a station, and building after building flashed by her: dreary houses with the stucco peeling off them, each with its broken-slatted shutters beside the windows, houses such as do not exist in England.

“If there is any beauty in this country it is of another kind from our English beauty, just as the ugliness is unlike our ugliness.” The change did not dismay her; it had the same effect of strangeness as the reflection of her own cropped head in the glass, seen unexpectedly as she lifted her handbag from off the luggage rack.

The train was approaching Paris, and before many minutes had passed a porter in a blue blouse had seized upon her handbag and Anne forgot to look for Richard Sotheby in the effort to produce a good impression on the porter. But even the inadequacy of her French could not detain him for more than a moment. His moustache trembled eagerly, his eye flashed, then he had disappeared.

“What a lovely outline there is to his cheek, how clear his complexion, how expressive his every movement!” and looking after the porter she began to fancy that if all Frenchmen were as handsome as the porter she would be in love with them all. “The beauty of the French face,” she said, “lies in the beauty of the cheekbones. An English face is made up of eyes and nose and mouth: the rest of the face is a blank space, but take away a Frenchman’s eyes: so often like eggs, or olives, take away his nose, and his mouth (always an uninteresting mouth) and you find his face is still full of expression and of beauty, indeed the face is improved.”

But the porter was back, and had set off down the platform with a commanding gesture to Anne to follow him, when she found herself being accosted by a stranger.

“Is this Miss Dunnock? My name’s Grandison,” he said. “Richard Sotheby asked me to meet you here; he is not able to come himself....”

“Ginette Grandison’s brother,” Anne said to herself, looking into the surly, boyish face, and noticing Grandison’s shyness. Meanwhile the porter with the lovely cheekbones had disappeared with her suit-case.

“What does the porter matter?” she thought. “What does the suit-case matter? What does it matter what this young man is mumbling about Richard? No, nothing matters. This is Paris; I have arrived, and a delightful happy life awaits me with these charming people. The opera ... friends.” In such a mood it seemed scarcely surprising that Richard should after all come up to them just as they were climbing into a cab.

“What is the latest news from Dry Coulter?” he asked, taking the seat beside her. Anne had not slept; the channel crossing by night was too exciting an experience to be missed, and she had remained on deck, watching the receding lights of England disappear, and then the lights of France springing up out of the darkness and growing in brilliance and in number.

“Dry Coulter?” she asked, and for the first moment the name conveyed nothing to her. “How can you ask about Dry Coulter when we are in Paris!” Richard laughed and Anne added at once: “Oh, I went with your father and mother and Rachel to see the new cottages, and the site for the hotel.”

“What hotel?” asked Richard, but while Anne was explaining she did not notice the look of anxiety on his face, for she was too much taken up with looking out of the taxi window. Soon she was asking questions: “What is that building? that street? that monument?” and was astonished that neither Richard nor his friend could tell her. She would have liked to spend hours driving about Paris, feeling Mr. Grandison’s gaze fixed upon her, and aware of the slight flush on her own cheek, but suddenly they rattled over a bridge and had turned into a narrow lane.

“I have taken a room for you here,” said Richard as they drew up. “You get your breakfast in your room, and an evening meal for about four shillings a day. I took it for a week. I suppose you will be staying a week in Paris.”

“I shall be staying for ever,” answered Anne.

Grandison gave a short, loud laugh. “I like the way you said that,” he exclaimed, handing her suit-case out of the cab.

A sleepy-looking man had opened the hotel door, and was taking her luggage.

“We’ll call for you this evening, and take you out to dinner if that would suit you,” said Richard; and the next moment the taxi began to move off and she found herself alone.

“I shall like Mr. Grandison,” she said as she followed the doorkeeper upstairs, and the excitement of looking at her room was mingled with the excitement of imagining that in a few days she would be laughing with the handsome man who had met her, and that he would lose his surliness and his shyness as they walked through Paris side by side. By the time she had finished unpacking she felt tired, and she lay down on the bed to rest. She could not sleep, and an hour later, when she looked out of the window and saw that the sunlight, which had greeted her on her arrival, had given place to driving rain. She had no umbrella, nor mackintosh, so she could not go out, and she felt shy and uncomfortable as she walked through the passages of the hotel. When she tried to speak to the chambermaid she found that she had forgotten her few words of French, but at last the day passed by and she was called from her room to find Mr. Grandison waiting for her in the hall.

“Richard sent me: he will meet us in the restaurant,” he said. They got into a cab, for it was still raining, and drove in silence until Anne, looking out of the window, asked what street they were in. “I don’t know,” answered the young man. “There are so many streets in Paris. But it is quite easy to find one’s way about.”

Anne would have liked to ask him about his sister, but she lacked the courage and nothing more was said. The restaurant to which they had driven was like a hundred others which they had passed on the way, and appeared indistinguishable from the restaurants on either side of it; each with basket-work chairs heaped upside down on the little iron tables outside, with an awning flapping in the wind, and “Brasserie” written in gigantic letters along the front. It was still raining, but when they had passed through the doors they found the room was crowded.

Richard was waiting for them at a corner table, and they sat down. Soon food was brought them, and Richard began to speak about the restaurant, but Anne hardly took in his words and forgot to help herself from the little dishes, for she was charmed by the scene before her: the small tables, each with its merry party, men laughing hastily before filling their mouths with soup, swallowing it, and then laughing again as they tore the long rolls of bread to pieces with their fingers.

But Richard was pressing Anne to help herself, handing her the little dishes and filling her glass with yellow wine, then turning and speaking to Grandison about some play of Ibsen’s which was being acted at a theatre in Paris. Anne’s pleasure was increased by knowing that Richard and his friend were talking of a play which she had read, and that she could share in the discussion if she chose, but her attention wandered once more, and she was the first to notice a girl who came towards them threading her way between the tables, followed by a fat man with a square red beard, who stopped to speak to some acquaintances who hailed him as he passed. But the girl came on and held out a cool brown hand for Anne to shake.

“Mademoiselle Lariboisière--always called Ginette,” said Richard. Ginette was beautiful, very beautiful, and Anne wondered how the mistake had arisen which had made her expect Ginette to be Mr. Grandison’s sister. Instead of that she was a Frenchwoman with a lean brown face like a mask and dark hazel eyes with black lashes.

“If I were only like Ginette,” she thought, a wish that recurred for many days afterwards whenever she was in her company, never guessing that the French girl was saying to herself: “If I were only like this English girl of Richard’s!”

Ginette sat down opposite them without appearing surprised that Richard and Gerald should go on talking in English and pay no attention to her, interrupting each other, laughing at one moment and becoming almost angry in the next. But though they were talking in English, Anne did not listen either; she gazed across the table at Ginette, wishing that she could speak to her and get to know her. At last the meal was over, the dishes were cleared away and soon they were joined by the fat man, in spite of all appearances an American.

Anne found that he was kissing her hand, and a drop of soup from his beard was smeared over her fingers. Her face showed her disgust as she jumped up from her seat, and without speaking to the American, who had drawn a chair near her, she went over to Ginette. But Ginette did not understand English, and after one or two halting sentences Anne fell into silence.

The group round the table was joined by several people, and each newcomer shook hands all round the table before sitting down. Anne had never shaken hands so often in her life, but there was no more hand-kissing and there were no more beards. A Chinaman seated himself beside Ginette, and they spoke so slowly that Anne was able to follow their conversation; and she was astonished that she had heard everything they said on the lips of English curates at tea parties in English parsonages. After a little while Grandison came and sat beside her and poured her out a glass of something warm, perfumed and sticky; it seemed the most delicious liquid that she had ever tasted. Conversation flowed on all sides of her, but she sat quiet, saying nothing and looking at the pink face and the fair hair of Richard’s friend and then at the Chinaman, who was talking so quietly and so tediously about the fatigues of railway journeys to Ginette, both of them indifferent to the shouting, excited group clustered round Richard and the red-bearded American. Anne did not gather what the subject of their argument was and she felt no desire to do anything. An hour passed and then another hour, and once Grandison called to the waiter, who refilled her little glass with the liqueur. It was enough for her to know that she was in Paris, and that this was her welcome. The voices, the faces, the Chinaman and Ginette melted into a dream full of colour and of movement and shot through with music; her head nodded and when Grandison touched her on the shoulder she smiled at him and realized that she was very tired.

“I want to go to bed,” she said. “Will you please tell me the address of my hotel?”

“I’ll see you home,” he said. “Richard is set now; he will stay here for hours.”

It had stopped raining, and they walked. The streets gleamed, and they turned into a great open place filled with trees and people sauntering under them. Men in groups were talking and laughing, pretty girls and painted women flashed their golden teeth as they passed by.

“How beautiful a town is,” Anne said, almost unconscious that she was speaking aloud. “But I shall never be at home in one. The stones of the streets frighten me. I love the garden where:

Stumbling on melons as I pass
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass,
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”

She paused for a moment, stumbled with sleepiness and took Grandison’s arm.

“The crowd here is so thick,” she continued. “The faces search one’s face, the eyes meet one’s eyes, yet they all seem to be looking for someone they can never find.”

They walked on slowly for some way in silence, but at last she spoke again.

“I believe everyone here is pursuing a dream, just as I pursued a dream walking under the elms at home; they speak to each other and pass on, but they never know each other. Man is always alone. They speak to each other, their eyes meet and sparkle; they smile and take each other by the arm: all in a dream. Here am I walking beside you, both of us are dreaming, unable to awake or to speak to each other.” There was a pause; Grandison did not contradict what she had said, and then she murmured, more to herself than to him: “I am utterly alone, but so is everybody else.”

They continued walking for a long way through deserted streets. Anne was feeling depressed by her train of thought, and Grandison was silent, but when at last they reached the Rue de Beaune she felt as if he had spoken and she had understood.

They shook hands, he looked into her eyes, cleared his throat as if he were going to speak, swallowed something, but then turned away without a word.

“I was wrong,” Anne said, feeling her heart filled once more with hope. “There is patience and nobility and honesty and faithfulness in the world.” As she dropped asleep it seemed to her that these qualities were inseparable from blue eyes and fair hair and fresh, blunt features.

THIRTEEN: PARIS

Next day, when she got up, Anne said to herself that she must see Richard at once to discuss her plans with him. But the beauty of the day tempted her to explore Paris. The morning was spent happily in looking into the windows of the shops in the Rue de Rivoli and in buying herself an umbrella; then she lunched alone, thinking that it would be better to reach the studio in the afternoon. But it was already late before she found Montmartre, and when at last she had mounted the staircase and had rung the bell she was prepared for Richard to be out.

“A day wasted,” she said to herself, but in her heart she felt that it had been well spent, wishing that she could spend another day and then another in wandering about Paris. In the evening she had dinner at her hotel, and then went out once more to see the town by night.

“I can never get lost in Paris so long as I can find the river, for if I follow the river sooner or later I must come to the Pont Royal, and from there it is but a step to my hotel.” She walked along the quays for some little way, but the Place de la Concorde tempted her with its wide expanse, and presently she found herself under the trees of the Champs Elysées. The clouds parted and the moonlight shone through the young leaves, a few dark figures moved in the shadows, and a band of young men passed her humming a foxtrot. Anne stopped for a moment and waved her arms with a sense of freedom and then strode rapidly up the hill.

At the Étoile she turned to the left down an avenue, which she guessed would bring her to the river, and when she saw the moonlight shining over the water she cried aloud: “I am free. I can do what I like; I can live how I like. I may never see Richard or his friend or anyone I have ever met, again. I have no friends in the world. Nobody can interfere now with my happy life!” And suddenly, as she gazed over the water, Anne remembered how she had wept in her bedroom on the morning when the ploughmen had come. “No need for tears now that the accursed chain is broken. Who would guess, meeting me here, that I was the vicar’s daughter with no hope of escaping from the parish? I am still alone, absolutely alone, but I care nothing for that because I am free. I am free!” she repeated in a loud voice which startled her, but there was no one near her, and she set off along the bank of the river. “I shall never go back!” she said, drawing herself up proudly, then, looking at the water, she wished that she could bathe, and her gaiety and irresponsibility were such that she was almost on the point of undressing beneath a lamp-post and plunging in. She recollected in time that she would be saved by a French policeman, and walked on laughing as she pictured to herself the explanations that she would offer next morning in the police-court in her broken French.

“Richard would never forgive me if I dragged him to a police-court,” she said, and her thoughts went back to her father. “Strange how blind I was, thinking that he needed me when he welcomed my going. But, who knows? he may be missing me now.” She turned back when she had reached St. Cloud and retraced her footsteps easily; in less than an hour she had reached the Pont Royal.

“I have done something that no respectable girl should do,” she said as she went up to her room. “I have run the risk of being spoken to in the street. Apparently I am not attractive enough to be in any danger from the vicious,” she added as she looked in the glass, but she was pleased with what she saw there and fell asleep at once.

There was a letter from Richard waiting for her asking her to luncheon the following day, and when the time came Anne was overjoyed to see a familiar face once more, though she had been repeating to herself the words she had spoken by the river.

The door of the studio was opened by Ginette, who held out a cool hand. As the girl turned to lead her in, Anne looked at the dark head with the short black hairs cropped close to the brown neck and such envy filled her at the sight that she nearly burst into tears. To be cool and dark and brown, to live in a studio with two men, to talk French, such were the hopeless ambitions which filled her heart. Grandison got up from his chair as she came in but he said nothing, only bowed and sat down again with his eyes on her face. Richard was washing his hands in the corner. “Don’t come near me, Anne, I am covered with paint,” he called out, but his voice sounded friendly as though he were glad to see her.

Ginette laid her hand on her shoulder:

“You are very beautiful,” she brought out laboriously. She had been practising the phrase all the morning, and the unexpected words set Anne blushing with pleasure. “Richard has said much of you but not that you are beautiful. He is bad.”

Anne’s blush was a blush of happiness, and she caught the French girl by the hand and pressed it. Ginette laughed and raised her eyebrows, and would have spoken if they had not been startled by Grandison, who ordered them to sit down to luncheon.

“I have brought some of the drawings I did for fashion plates to show you,” said Anne, but Richard did not refer to them when the meal was over; he seemed more interested in Dry Coulter than in Paris, and began to speak of the village while his companions sat in silence.

“I have heard from Rachel: she is very excited as she is going to be chosen Queen of the May. You know May-day is even more of an institution than Plough Monday,” he said, turning towards Grandison. “It is celebrated more pleasantly in an English village than in Paris.” And Richard began to describe how five little girls were chosen, of whom Rachel would be the leader, to go from house to house carrying an arbour of flowers and singing whatever songs they happened to know.

“The arbour is made of cowslips and may, with a few of the early purple orchids,” said Anne, calling up the memory of May-day a year ago. “It was raining when they came to the vicarage and they wore yellow ribbons and sang ‘Ta ra ra Boom de ay.’ I opened the door and they went on singing without paying any attention to the sixpence I held out to them.”

“That sixpence went to the chapel Sunday School Treat,” said Richard. “Paganism has been made respectable.”

“What will Rachel wear as the May Queen?”

“She speaks of a wreath of pansies if there are enough of them out to make it; her companions will have chaplets of forget-me-nots, and they will carry the bower while she carries an armful of tulips. She did not speak of her dress, but of course it will be a white one, and they will wear black worsted stockings and solid little hobnailed boots laced high up the leg.”

“Rachel doesn’t worry about her boots,” said Anne at once, and her thoughts flew back to Mr. Yockney, then she looked round the studio thinking that the rent was paid out of the grocer’s shop at home. “I think Rachel’s perfectly happy. I think all your family are,” she said.

“So they ought to be,” said Richard, laughing. “See what a good son I am. I give my father an object in life, which is more than any of you do. He is very happy and proud of me. In the old days of course,” Richard went on, “the first of May was a great affair, with a maypole set up and a Jack of the Green. The May Queen was not a little girl in those days. You would have been chosen instead of Rachel and, having been kissed by all the boys in the village, you would have got rid of your obsession about never getting to know anyone.”

Anne blushed uncomfortably, and looked at Grandison, who must, she thought, have repeated what she had said while he was seeing her home. “An obsession about never getting to know anyone!” and she wondered if Richard had summed her up for ever in these unkind words.

“I expect the maze was laid out on a May-day,” said Richard, “and the monument is nothing more than a stone maypole, or something with the same signification.”

“I can tell you about the monument,” said Anne. “It commemorates the restoration of Charles II, and was put up by a young man of nineteen, who must have come back from France with the King and recovered his sequestered estate:--a small enough one, I should guess, and the Old Hall. I suppose the maze might have been cut on a May-day, and no doubt they had a maypole on the green again: they had been put down under the Commonwealth, but I doubt if there were many to dance. All the better people had served in Cromwell’s regiments. Except in Huntingdon itself, they were all Puritans.”

“Then we must imagine your young cavalier setting up a maypole on the green and dancing with gypsy girls and all the riff-raff he could assemble, while the village people held aloof under the elm trees round the edges of the green and prayed for a thunderstorm,” said Richard.

“There were oak trees in those days, not elms,” said Anne.

“How do you know that?” he asked her sharply.

She knew positively, but she had forgotten how she knew and, as she repeated that she was sure, she felt that she must seem very stupid to Mr. Grandison.

“Well, he danced in a scarlet coat with lace ruffles, which he had brought back from France, with the gipsy girls in their rags, and Maggie Pattle joined in for the sake of the beer, but all the respectable tenants stood under the oak trees looking glum and hating him. But how do you explain that the monument is still standing and that, though it is the most striking thing in the village, nobody ever looks at it or knows anything about it? If one asks a question they just shake their heads and change the conversation.”

“The young cavalier lived to be eighty-eight,” answered Anne. “It is natural that nobody would dare disturb his maze while he was living, or to pull down the stone column sculptured with his arms. All the Puritans were dead before he was, and the significance of the monument was forgotten by 1729.”

“But the civil war isn’t forgotten,” said Richard.

“I have often heard a villager say when someone has got into trouble for poaching hares: ‘We want another of the Cromwells in this country. There were no game laws in Nolly’s time.’”

“I expect there is a tradition that the maze represents something out of harmony with the village: they have ignored it for so long that they have forgotten everything except that it is something which ought to be ignored,” said Anne.

Richard agreed with her, and an hour passed before she remembered the drawings she had brought to show him.

“Leave them for me to look at,” said Richard, but she would not be put off. As she untied the portfolio she felt that her fingers were trembling, and she became confused as she explained that she knew her drawings were not fashionable: she had done them at Dry Coulter in ignorance of what the latest fashions might be, thinking that they would serve as specimens to show her workmanship. Instead of explaining this clearly, what she said was something very silly, but Richard did not smile at her absurdity, and there was an absolute silence as she laid the first of the drawings on the table, propping it up against a wine bottle.

For a long while Richard Sotheby stood wrinkling his nose and Gerald and Ginette stood silent.

“And the next,” said Richard sharply, but, going to the portfolio himself, he turned over the other drawings rapidly. There was a silence again as he carefully fastened the clasp of the portfolio, and then turned and walked a few steps away. Suddenly, however, he began to speak, and the words fell so rapidly that Anne could scarcely follow them.

“Dress designers are very stupid people,” he began. “Don’t be discouraged when I advise you not to show these actual drawings. In order to create an impression you must first obtain a thorough knowledge of the mode. There is just as much fashion in the drawings of dresses as in the dresses themselves. What would have been all right last year or the year before is quite out of date now.” And he began to explain very rapidly what these changes in styles of drawing had been.

He was interrupted suddenly by Ginette. Anne could not follow her words, but she noticed Grandison nod his head vigorously and say: “An excellent idea,” while an expression of exasperation came over Richard’s white face.

When he turned to Anne she felt a sudden conviction that her drawings were bad and that Richard was concealing his opinion of them.

“Ginette is of the opinion that you are the right figure, and that you have acquired, Heaven knows how, the right appearance for a mannequin. She wants to introduce you to a man she knows who works in one of the wholesale houses. I think that you would dislike such a life and would soon wish that you were back in England. But don’t despair about your drawings,” he added, almost shouting the last words.

Anne took up her portfolio, turning Ginette’s advice over in her mind.

“How should I get a job as a mannequin?” she asked, but an argument had broken out between Richard and Ginette and her question went for some time unanswered. At last he turned from the French girl in exasperation, and she repeated her question.

“Ginette will let you know,” he said. “Come to tea to-morrow at five o’clock.” The tone of the invitation was so cross that Anne said good-bye at once. Grandison had scarcely spoken a word during the discussion, but as she left the room he made a gesture as if he would speak, but he said nothing.

“What have I done to upset them all so much?” she asked herself as she hurried down the stairs, but she could find no answer. Richard’s words had been encouraging, yet she was tempted to tear up her wretched drawings then and there.

“Yes, my fashion plates are hopeless,” she said to herself, but she found it hard to understand why Richard should have been so exasperated by Ginette’s suggestion. “If my drawings are no good I must find some other way of earning my living. Richard would keep me in a fool’s paradise until my money is exhausted.”

Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and she heard a voice calling her. It was Richard.

“I meant to ask you: if you are short of money, let me lend you ten pounds. You must have time to look about you.”

Anne stared at him in surprise. He was very white; out of breath with running and his words came with an effort, but his tone was still one of exasperation.

“Thank you,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Thank you, I have still seventeen pounds.”

“Well, later on,” answered Richard. “Whenever you want a loan, come to me. While one has money it is one’s duty to share it. That is what Grandison and I believe, and after all you and I come from the same village.”

After saying this he turned round and walked back, quietly cursing her existence.

FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL

“How could I ever have imagined that I was in love with Richard Sotheby?” Anne asked herself in astonishment as she walked back across Paris. “It turns out I don’t love him enough to borrow money from him. He would always behave well, he would always be kind, yet I think he would be delighted if he were never to see me again. I shall never ask him for help or for advice; I shall never go near his studio after to-morrow.” And it occurred to her suddenly that the money he had offered to lend her had been earned by his father, and that it might have been spent on Rachel, or on the Temperance Hotel.

“I wonder why it is that Ginette loves him?” she asked herself. “If she really does. If I were her I should lose my heart to Mr. Grandison.” And saying this she recalled the look in Grandison’s eyes and how he had kept them fixed on her, how he had seemed to be going to speak and the gesture with which he had sunk back into his chair as she went out of the studio. “Richard has robbed me of knowing him. We should easily have become intimate, we should have been friends,” she said with her heart full of bitterness. Every detail of her walk with Grandison came back and hurt her.

“Well, I am to be a mannequin if they like my figure.” The more she thought of Ginette’s suggestion the better she liked it, and the more difficult she found it to understand Richard’s annoyance. She was puzzled to find an explanation, and tried one theory after another, but nothing she could imagine seemed to her probable, and when five o’clock came on the following afternoon she had almost persuaded herself that the explanation of Richard’s ill-humour must be something quite unconnected with herself. She knocked and Richard opened the door, and stood for a moment in the threshold before admitting her. He stared at her with a grin on his face and said: “Oh! So it is you, Anne!”

“Weren’t you expecting me?” she asked, noticing his surprise. “You said I was to come to tea.”

Richard Sotheby led her into the studio, and Ginette rose from the sofa, where she had been lying. The girl’s face had changed; Anne could see that she had been crying, but there was so much pride in her greeting that she felt shy of looking her in the face.

“Here is a letter for you,” said Ginette gravely, speaking in French and pronouncing her words with the greatest distinctness. “You are to present it personally to M. Kieselyov at that address at eight o’clock to-morrow morning. If he thinks you are in the English style he will engage you.”

“Thank you with all my heart. Your goodness....” Ginette did not wait for Anne to finish her sentence, but walked away across the room.

Richard was making the tea. “Have you heard from your father?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t,” said Anne, feeling rather guilty. She had not written to him since her arrival.

“I had a letter from mother with messages for you from Rachel.” He was half tempted to add that their names must be coupled together in the village by now, and that this was disagreeable to him, but he looked at Anne and refrained.

She had taken off her hat, and the short, closely cropped hair shone like straw. There was a worried look on her pale face.

“My God, what innocence!” he said to himself.

“Ginette and Richard have been quarrelling,” thought Anne, wondering if Grandison would come in, for she was miserably disappointed not to see him.

But instead of asking if he would be back to tea she said: “I wonder if the swallows are building again in our dove house.”

“Do they build there?” asked Richard, and the whole expression of his face altered at her words.

“Yes, they have a nest on the joist. Father leaves the top half of the door open for them and they fly in and out. They are the prettiest of the birds; my favourites, for no birds exceed them in loveliness of colouring: the steel-blue back, the crimson throat and the white belly. The flight of the swallow is more beautiful than that of any other bird, but this pair are prettiest when they sit side by side on the rails outside the dove house. Their spirits always seem to me a little low: she moves one wing and then the other, as though she were shrugging her little shoulders, and then, suddenly, he bursts into song. Do you know the swallows’ song?”

“No,” said Richard. “I have never heard a swallow sing.” He sat down and buried his face in his hands, and repeated in tones of utter wretchedness: “No, I have never heard a swallow sing.”

“He has the clear note of a contralto; not loud or defiant, nor yet feeble, but full of love, subdued because he can never forget that the world is full of cruelty and unkindness.”

Ginette broke in with a question as to what Anne had said.

Richard told her, and the French girl smiled wearily.

“In England it is only the swallows apparently which have discovered such platitudes.” Then she added: “Why is she staying?”

“It appears we invited her to tea,” answered Richard in a low voice.

There was the sound of a heavy tramp on the stairs and then a knock. Richard stood up and went to the door. Anne looked across at Ginette and saw that she was gazing at her with a strange expression.

“I must go,” she said to herself. “Why does she look at me as if she felt contempt for me?” But it seemed impossible to go after that look without an explanation. The memory of that expression would haunt her.

She looked up and saw that Richard had come back from the door, and that a workman had followed him, and together they crossed the studio and disappeared into the little room at the back.

Anne sat and sipped her tea, tortured by the need to speak, to ask a question, to see light, and by the desire to escape, to go out of the studio and never to set foot in it again. But she could not find the words with which to ask her question or to take her leave, and she sat on, dumbly watching the workman crossing the room, first with a rolled-up mattress in his arms and then with a little folding bed or carrying a wash-hand-stand. Richard came back and threw himself down in a chair. There was a silence, prolonged until the workman reappeared, crossed the studio and went out once more with a chair and a looking-glass.

Ginette gave Richard an appealing look and he said:

“Anne, I think perhaps you had better go now. Ginette and I are both rather upset.” He paused for a moment and said in colourless tones: “Besides, someone who wishes to see you is waiting.”

Anne rose. “Good-bye, Mademoiselle Lariboisière,” she said, holding out her hand. The brown hand gripped hers firmly.

“Till we meet again,” she said, and then added in broken English: “You have a lucky face.”

“Thank you for telling me about the swallows,” said Richard as he stood above her at the top of the stairs.

The French workman was struggling with a small table on the staircase and it was some moments before she could reach the street.

“Never to know the meaning! Never to learn the secret! Never to understand anything at all!” Anne cried with tears coming into her eyes. “I have never seen into another person’s heart. I never shall. Wherever I am, my curse clings to me!” A vague project of suicide, of being found floating in the river, passed through her mind as she stepped out into the street. The workman was still in front of her lifting the table into a small motor-van; in avoiding him she ran into Grandison’s back.

“Good God! You here! Don’t go away!” he exclaimed, as though she was running from him. Anne stepped back and stood for a moment staring in astonishment into his red face.

His words sounded angry, and his blue eyes glittered angrily so that she felt afraid and her first impulse was to run back into the house. “I cannot go up there again,” flashed through her mind, and she turned again to Grandison.

“Miss Dunnock,” said the young man, still looking at her, almost murderously. “I must make an explanation.”

The word explanation caught her ears. “No, that is impossible,” she said to herself for some reason. “An explanation is impossible.”

“I don’t understand,” she said in a weak voice, giving up all thoughts of flight. She was almost in tears. “I don’t understand anything.”

Grandison’s anger or passion seemed suddenly to have completely disappeared. He looked at her appealingly with an expression in which she could read pity for her and misery on his own account. For a moment he tried to speak and choked, and then, swallowing, went on rapidly:

“It is rather complicated. I am taking away my furniture to a new room and must superintend the man unpacking it. If you could come with me in the van we could talk to each other.”

The van was packed; the man was waiting, impatient of their conversation. Anne did not hesitate, but scrambled up on to the tail-board of the van and settled herself on the rolled-up mattress.

She was excited without knowing why, and suddenly, looking at Grandison perched beside her on the edge of the wash-hand-stand, she felt happy and secure.

“I want to explain,” he said suddenly, as though he were defending himself. “This is my furniture. I am taking it away from the studio because I cannot live with Richard or with Ginette any longer. I have broken with them completely, and have taken a room of my own.”

There was so much suffering in his voice that Anne understood that there had been a quarrel. At that moment all seemed suddenly to have become clear to her, and she felt that she was a very experienced person. “What foolishness!” she exclaimed to herself.

“Why should they have quarrelled?” And she decided to persuade Grandison to turn back.

“Why do you want to leave them?” she asked gently. She was preparing to reason with him sympathetically, and softly to lead him back to Richard. For a moment Grandison sat silent, and something in his sullen expression, his trembling lip and the way in which he opened and then shut his hand, moved her very much.

“I must explain,” he repeated. “Ever since I met you at the station I have been madly in love with you.”

Anne felt cold all over as she heard these words; she shivered and gazed at Grandison with frightened eyes, asking herself if she had heard what he had said aright; a suspicion crossed her mind that he was playing a joke on her, a heartless practical joke. She gazed at him in terror, but he went on without turning his head to look at her: “It has been awful. I could not speak to you while I was still living in Richard’s studio. I think Ginette guessed but Richard did not suspect until I told him after you went yesterday. I did not think it would upset him so much or that it would upset me so much.”

“I don’t understand why he should be upset or why he dislikes me, but I feel he does. There has never been anything between Richard and me,” said Anne. She stopped, feeling that she had said something foolish.

“I know, but there has been a great deal between Richard and me,” answered Grandison. “Just now he hates you, though it is not your fault that I am in love with you, and he knows that.”

“He has got Ginette,” said Anne.

“Oh, my God!” cried Grandison, making the most awful face. “Ginette was my mistress. Surely you knew that?”

Anne gazed at the cuff of Grandison’s coat: a check material with a little wavy thread of purple running among the fawns and greys. She was overcome with shame and confusion at her ignorance and her stupidity. There was a long silence.

“This doesn’t seem like a trick,” she said to herself, but the fear that Grandison might in some way be playing some strange and terrible joke at her expense remained at the back of her mind.

“For some reason I thought that Ginette and you were the same person before I arrived,” she said. “You see I overheard Richard spelling out a telegram to you in French before I had ever spoken to him.”

“A telegram?” Grandison asked in astonishment. “Oh, yes, perhaps he did telegraph. I wrote and told him that I was in love with Ginette and that I proposed taking her to live with us.... That was a dreadful thing to have done. You see, Richard was very fond of me; he cares about nobody else,” he said suddenly, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

“I have always, all my life, mismanaged my love affairs. But that is because I have never been in love before. Now I am in love with you and I determined not to mismanage that but to make a clean sweep of everything.”

This remark, and the defiant tone in which it was uttered, struck Anne as comic; she laughed but immediately regretted having done so, for Grandison burst into tears.

She had never seen a man weep before and was alarmed. The tears streamed down his cheeks and hung on the stubble of his beard, for he had not shaved that day, and then fell one after another on to his knees.

Anne jumped up from the mattress, hitting her head on the top of the van. “Oh! Damn!” She clutched Grandison round the shoulders while her eyes filled with tears from the pain. “Don’t cry; I have hit my head such an awful crack, but you see I am not crying,” she said, hugging him and then slipping on to her knees. He looked at her, and the van pulled up with a jerk just as they found each other’s faces in a kiss. They alighted, and Grandison led the way into the meanest building that Anne had ever seen. His room was on the top floor, and as they ascended, an odour of cooking, of accumulated filth, of bugs and of boiled rags took them by the throat. But they climbed on, up and up, and behind them toiled the indignant workman, sweating under the mattress in his arms, and pausing to curse the smells and the filthiness of the house under his breath.

“The view is magnificent,” said Grandison with a sweep of his arm as he threw open the door of a tiny attic.

“Put the things down anywhere, just as you like,” he added to the workman. He was right, the view was magnificent. All Paris lay glittering at their feet in the sunshine, and Anne forgot the malodorous staircase as she leant out of the open window.

“Yes, the view is lovely,” she said, turning to Grandison, but an altercation was going on with the workman, who was repeating again and again: “This place stinks.”

Grandison could understand the words well enough, but he was offended and resolutely shrugged his shoulders, repeating: “Don’t understand. Fetch my furniture.”

“This place stinks,” repeated the workman with appropriate gestures. “It gives me a bad throat.” He made sounds as if he were going to be sick.

“I don’t understand what you say; fetch the furniture,” repeated Grandison in a rage, and began to push the man out of the room. “A house full of Poles and bugs,” said the man as he made off down the staircase.

“It’s quite an accident,” said Grandison, “that there is such a wonderful view. I took the first room I could find, by candle light. It is dirty, but I had it scrubbed out with disinfectant this morning. I shall get some sulphur candles in case what he says about the bugs is true.”

Anne sniffed: a smell of Jeyes fluid hung in the air. They were silent, gazing out of the window, waiting while the slow tramp of feet and muttered curses drew nearer and the man came in carrying the bed.

“It stinks,” he announced, returning to Richard.

Grandison cursed suddenly with great obscenity in fluent French.

“You mustn’t talk to me like that,” answered the man, but he left the room after looking at Anne with an air of icy disapproval. “Damn the fellow,” said Grandison, and they remained silent while the table, the wash-hand-stand, a piece of drugget and the chairs were brought in.

Grandison had recovered his temper by then, and gave the man a tip. “One doesn’t say such things,” said the workman, pocketing it, and he went down the stairs clearing his throat. They listened to the tramp of feet descending the stairs without looking at each other, and stood motionless through the minutes of dead silence which followed. “He must be waiting and poking about in the hall,” was their unspoken thought and, exchanging a swift glance, they nodded their suspicions. A sudden crash resounded up the stairs of the outer door being slammed, and they smiled happily at each other, for love is impossible except in secret. But although they smiled the silence continued, their hearts beating faster and faster and confusion coming upon them.

“We must put up the bed,” said Anne.

Grandison helped her mechanically; the pleasure of her presence near him was so great that he was afraid to speak lest some word of his might scare her away. Together they unfolded the legs of the narrow iron bedstead, set it upon its feet, covered it with a weedy mattress and a coverlet. Then they laid the carpet on the floor, set the trunk in one corner, the washstand in another, and put the table in the middle of the room. There was nothing more to be done, and after speaking once or twice of buying such necessaries as a broom and a looking-glass, they became silent again, Anne sitting in the only chair, Grandison upon the bed, while darkness closed in on them very slowly.

It seemed to the girl then that at last she had found what she had been seeking.

“I have found this room,” she said to herself, and already she was at home in it, and she sat musing over the vast landscape of the future, of which she had suddenly caught a glimpse as she had of Paris itself, but without knowledge and unable to recognize the landmarks.

But at last, rousing herself, she looked about her and asked suddenly: “How will you paint in such a small room?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I only paint because Richard does.”

“It has got dark,” she said. “I can’t see your face.”

He struck a match and they looked at each other.

“I haven’t got a candle,” he said apologetically. “And there is no gas.”

Anne rose from her chair. “She is going,” Grandison said to himself as he stood up. Their hands touched and they embraced. “I have always loved you. Before I knew you. Before I knew myself, while I was still in the navy,” he whispered rapidly between his kisses.

The whispering went on and on in the dark room, lit by the flickering arc lamps in the street below. Each whisper was a charm that breathed love into her, that stole away her strength, and that changed her nature. Yet Anne still held herself alert, danger seemed near; at any moment a heavy footstep might sound upon the stairs, a voice break in. It seemed to her that if she sat very still the danger might pass, and when Grandison’s voice rose she stroked his hair nervously--hair as short and thick and soft as fur.

“Richard--the danger is Richard,” she said to herself, recognizing that she was helpless in face of that danger.

Hours passed but no footstep sounded on the stairs, and no voice spoke out of the darkness; only the moon breaking through the clouds flooded the room with light, showing them to each other. They became hungry, but they forgot their hunger, remembered the passage of time and as soon forgot it, grew sleepy and did not think of sleep.

A clock struck and they counted eleven strokes.

“You must be hungry,” said Anne.

“Yes, I am,” answered Grandison, surprised, but he took an apple from his pocket, and when they had shared it their hunger seemed to be satisfied.

A clock struck, and they lost count of the strokes.

“It is midnight,” said Anne. “I must go back to my hotel.” But she did not move, and an hour later she had consented to stay the night, had undressed in the dark and had got into the bed, while Grandison had wrapped himself in his overcoat and, covered with the piece of drugget, was stretched out upon the floor.

For a long while Anne went on stroking his hair, and when at last they fell asleep he was still grasping her hand in both of his and holding it to his lips.

“What’s the matter?”

A strangled cry of “Help!” was ringing in her ears, but she understood that it was her own voice that she had heard.

“What’s the matter, Anne?”

“It is all right,” she answered, coming to herself, but her voice was full of fear, and Grandison, sitting up by her bed, could see her shudder.

“I suppose it was a dream,” she murmured, and suddenly the fear left her as the details of her nightmare came back, and she lay in silence piecing them together.

“It was something awful about my father,” she said. “I was alone, quite alone, in the vicarage. There was no furniture; I went from room to room looking for my father, but all the rooms were empty; all the furniture had been taken away but they had left me behind. Suddenly I looked out of the bedroom window, my father’s bedroom, for it was at the front of the house, and as I expected I saw a Ford van stop at the gate and people getting out of it.” Anne shuddered again violently and Grandison began stroking her shoulder. “Don’t tell me if it frightens you,” he said.