Phyllis Bottome

“ I am very much afraid of people I don't know, and I dislike them awfully."
"All the better for those you do know," said Gervase. He was calm again now, and eyed her with some friendliness and more amusement. "But, yes, if you want to be an artist, you must work from the life," he continued. "What you have done here is good. It shows more than promise, it is to some extent even achievement; but it is a little achievement,—how does one say it?—it is not up to the measure of your capacity. For that you must get rid of fear. ”

“ I do not follow women."
"Méchant!" exclaimed the concierge with delight. Still, she did not believe he would ever accompany Mademoiselle l'Anglaise. "Ice melts," said madame to herself; "but iron and ice never."
Then one cold April day when all the almond blossoms had been drenched and blinded and flung madly to and fro about the garden there was a hurried, frightened knock at Monsieur Gervase's door. It was a shrinking, timid, ineffectual knock, and Monsieur Gervase flew to the door to answer it. It is only a woman who knocks like that, and of women only one who is superlatively shy. ”

“ He felt like seizing her by the hands and dancing with her round the studio.
"Parbleu! he cried, "you can work!"
She looked quickly at him, with a sudden letting down of barriers.
"You think so?" she asked with a little catch in her breath. "You think I can do something good one day? For that it would be worth while having had to come to France."
"Ah, Mademoiselle," cried Gervase, with a little gesture of ironic despair, "poor France!"
For a Frenchman, to hate France is as if you hated his mother. Mademoiselle l'Anglaise flushed a little. ”

“ Gervase's face burned like fire; it was as if she had struck him. He could not remember such a thing ever happening in the gardens before. He could not believe any woman would do such a cruel thing on such a day, least of all to him Gervase.
. It was not gracious, it was not kind; it was essentially English. His mother was right: the English were a race of barbarians like the Germans, whom they pretended to dislike. ”

“ The Americans—not the beloved inhabitants, but the tourist Americans—with cries for lost suitcases, with passionate insistence upon checks without value, with incredulous assertions of personal rights, had vanished, shrieking to the last, into merciful oblivion. The Paris Americans moved unwillingly, considerately, slowly; they left their hearts behind them, but they moved. The Russians left, the Poles left, unwashed to the last.
There was no one in the garden but the French themselves and Mademoiselle l'Anglaise, and it was then she found that she belonged to them. ”

“ The Boulevard Arago shook under the passing of huge wagons and rumbling motors; sometimes with a scream a flying taxi rattled and clamored through the heavier sounds. Sometimes a mail-van shot past with a noise like thunder, and always continuously, interminably, there were voices in the streets—wandering, returning voices, never very loud, but ceaseless, and strangely intent, as if some subject had taken hold of the night, and could not be dismissed. ”

“ After the departure of madame, Monsieur Gervase would give a great entertainment, and "Woman at Dawn," "The Drinking Lady," and the "End of Pleasure" would return to him with their accommodating hosts. The concierge would shut her ears to late pianos, errant voices, and steps infirmly returning to curiously inaccessible front doors. "After all," she would say to the Americans next day, "le bon Dieu made youth. When one opens a bottle of champagne, if it is good, a little spills, is it not so?"
Monsieur Gervase was hard at work smoking a cigarette upon his door-step. ”

“ Gravity dawned into amusement in her eyes, and then swept back to a deeper seriousness.
At the end of his speech Gervase flung himself back into an arm-chair, shivering. For a moment she really thought he was worse than the stove. She was not in the least afraid of him, however.
"You see," she said, "I don't agree with you at all. I do not like life very much, not what you mean by it; but I do love style. I would make great sacrifices for it. You are an artist yourself, I know, and I am sure you are telling me the truth ”

“ Do you not know that life is as big as the sky, as crushing as a volcano, as hot as fire, and as good as the sunshine? What are you doing here at all? Why are you alive? Of what use is it to have meals, to sleep, to be beautiful and young! ”

“ The concierge for the first time in her career was unable to give him any further information on the subject of Mademoiselle l'Anglaise.
"Voyez-vous," she exclaimed, "as a rule, when they don't speak, the bonne expounds. This one has a bonne very elderly and thin—thin to a degree that suggests a perpetual Lent, out of whom one extracts nothing. Monsieur Gervase, I tell you this for your good: avoid thin women! There is nothing to them—nothing but the severity of the thing blighted. What others have left alone should never be sought. It is a pear with a wasp in it that tastes sweetest. ”

“ Society is mixed in the gardens. It is mixed as to race: there are Russians, Greeks,—there were Austrians and a German once,—Poles, Americans, and the French themselves; but the mixture of race is as nothing compared with the inequality of social position.
The Russians don't know the Poles, the Austrians and the German cultivated a deep mutual distaste, the French don't know one another. They only know that they would rather not. The Americans alone, with their kindly, unintimate heartiness, were accepted by every one. ”

“ The concierge, with whom they were great favorites, told them what she thought was good for them. She told them of the arrival of Lucia Dale.
"This one," she explained, "is quite alone. She is English. One would say she is too young and too pretty to be alone by herself, but one would be wrong. She has an eye of ice and of iron; she inspires fear. And the questions she asks about drains! One would suppose the English slept in them, they are so particular." ”

“ Frightened, he dashed back to the gardens.
"Has Mademoiselle l'Anglaise returned?" he asked the concierge, fiercely.
"But of course," said the concierge with great tranquillity. "Why should she not return?"
Gervase dismissed the question angrily.
"She has no business to be out alone," he muttered. For a moment it seemed as if he would knock down one of the Poles for standing on his own door-step and looking across to the house of mademoiselle. Gervase knocked sharply at her door. Mademoiselle l'Anglaise was flushed a little, too, and she seemed relieved to see him. ”

“ She had a peculiar feeling about Gervase. It seemed as if she safer with him than she had ever been with any one else in her life, and yet he was a Frenchman.
"I don't know," she said, "if you really—" She left this sentence unfinished, and began another: "And if you'll promise to do anything else you'd rather do, and come for me only when you're perfectly free?"
"Willingly," said Gervase. "There could be no promise easier for me to make than that."
Lucia looked relieved. "Well, then," she said, "thank you. I won't get the big dog. Will you stay to tea?" ”

“ For her and for her alone he had appeared smart upon his door-step at the unnatural hour of eight o'clock in the morning! Well, it was a mistake; such a nationality was not worthy of such a sacrifice.
He retired into his studio, dragged on his apron, and worked extremely badly for several hours.
For a fortnight he sedulously avoided Mademoiselle l'Anglaise. This is not to say he did not notice her. You cannot very well help noticing your next-door neighbor when your door-steps touch; and if she was disagreeable to speak to, she was beautiful to notice. ”

“ She found it because the laundress refused to accept money for the washing.
"Tiens,"she explained, "it will be difficult for you to get money just now. I will take the washing just the same. What difference does it make? We are all of one family here."
The concierge's daughter came in and said:
"Since Josephine has not come back, it is I who will assist mademoiselle in the house. We cannot permit her to suffer."
The little Frenchwoman with red eyes crossed the gardens every morning with her paper and with letters, unstamped, precious letters that came very slowly from là-bas. ”