CHAPTER VIII

Eric drove at once to the little hotel off the Avenue de la Grande Armée, and made himself known. He had wired for a room at the Crillon, preferring not to stay too near Connie lest he should find her surrounded by sympathetic friends. He dreaded her friends.

The granddaughter of old Madame Peritôt, a pleasant-faced woman named Le Blanc, gave him a cordial welcome, asked immediately after Madame Claire and then told him in answer to his question that Madame la Comtesse was resting, but would undoubtedly see her brother. Who indeed, she thought, would not be glad to see such a brother--a brother with such delightful manners, whose blue eyes--Ciel! Madame Le Blanc was enchanted by the blueness of his eyes.

Eric waited in the little salon, remembering incidents of their extremely happy childhood. Madame Claire had so often brought the three of them there, during vacations. They had nearly always come to Paris en route for the coast of Brittany or Normandy when the Roman summers became unbearable. He remembered how he and Connie, an exquisite, long-legged child of fifteen, had knocked over and broken a Dresden group during a scrimmage. They had secretly substituted for it another almost exactly like the first, except that the dress of the shepherdess which had been blue with pink flowers, was now pink with blue flowers. There it stood, just where their guilty hands had placed it, so many years ago, and he could not resist taking it off the mantelpiece and examining it. It was one of old Madame Peritôt's most prized possessions, and how they laughed when they realized that she had never noticed the difference! It might easily have met the fate just then of its unlucky predecessor, for he nearly dropped it, so suddenly and quietly did Connie enter--and such a Connie!

It was characteristic of Eric that he never said anything suitable to occasions. He kissed her cheek, and then said, holding her at arm's length and looking at her:

"You must come and dine with me. What do you say to a sole and a broiled chicken somewhere?"

But Connie felt that something more was due to the situation, so she clung to his arm and found--or seemed to find--speech difficult.

"Eric! Is it really you? My God! After all these years! Oh, Eric!"

"Nearly twenty, isn't it? And thirty or more since we broke the Dresden group there. Go and put your hat on. What a pretty dress!"

"You like it?" She turned about with something of her old grace and coquetry. "You were always quick to notice nice things. But how did you know where to find me, and why did you come? This seems like a dream to me. And you're still so good-looking!"

"Thank you, my dear. No one has ever told me that. It is charming of you. I came to see you. Mother guessed you would be here. And now go and put on your hat, for I'm very hungry."

"In a moment. I want to look at you.... I'd almost forgotten I had a brother. But how did you know I was in Paris at all? That meddlesome old Stephen de Lisle, I suppose, bless him!" Then her beautiful voice deepened. "Eric, I've got very old, haven't I? Tell me the truth."

Eric told it in his own way.

"I'm afraid I never think about age," he said, "so it's no good asking me. I think you look worried. Come, we'll dine early. There's a great deal to talk about. And don't change. I like you in that."

"I won't be long." She went to the door and then turned. "I'm being taken out to dinner by my own brother," she said softly. "You make me feel quite--respectable, Eric."

Her last words hurt him. If there had been any one with him he would have said as she left the room:

"Good God! The pity of it!"

It wasn't age he meant. He cared as little for that as most intelligent men. Connie had lost her youth. That was to be expected. But she had never gained its far more interesting successor, character. It was that he missed. She was spiritually, mentally and morally down at the heel. Her face was a weary mask, her yellow hair had known the uses of peroxide as well as of adversity, and her blue eyes, paler than her brother's, looked out, without expression, from a rim of carelessly darkened lashes. The frank vulgarity of her scarlet lips revolted him.

"All that," he said to himself, "to win a--Chiozzi!" He had hurried her off to get her hat because he couldn't bear to talk to her in that room of childish memories. It brought back to him too clearly the girl of fifteen, with her exquisite, sparkling face, her laughter, and that mane of fine golden hair that people in the streets too often turned to stare at.... He meant to help her, he had come to help her--but how to go about it? That he must leave to the inspiration of the moment.

When she returned, handsomely furred and too youthfully hatted, he gave her another kindly kiss to encourage her--for he could see that she was really moved--and took her arm as they went to the door. An old woman in another salon across the hall had observed their movements with the keenest interest. She carried an ear trumpet, but thanked Heaven that her eyes were as good as ever. Good enough to distinguish the paint on that woman's cheeks--which had not prevented Mr. Gregory from kissing her. Lady Gregory's only son! She knew he had married the youngest daughter of old Admiral Broughton, a great friend of the late King's. He had once been heard to say to him at a garden party--it must have been in 1907--There, they are getting into a cab together. He has taken her hand--off they go! Dear, dear! How very distressing! Poor Lady Gregory, and poor neglected wife! It wasn't as if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes. And she hadn't lived in this wicked old world for sixty-nine years--even though most of them had been spent in Kensington--without knowing a _demi-mondaine_ when she saw one. Odd she was to see Miss Thomkinson, a cousin of the Broughtons, the very next day. No, shocked as she was at the presence of such a woman in that house, she preferred not to speak to Madame le Blanc about it. It didn't go to enter into arguments with these French people, and besides, her vocabulary wasn't equal to it.

In the cab, Eric said gently:

"Well, Connie, my dear, I've come to help you in any way that I can, and to take you back to England with me if you wish to go. I gather that your marriage is anything but happy. Tell me about it."

Connie tried to speak but her efforts ended in a sudden burst of tears. She sobbed openly and unbecomingly. Eric, his eyes full of pain and concern, held her hand and looked out of the window at the once familiar streets. She had lived on her emotions for so long that self-control, he supposed, was utterly beyond her now. It was true that she had cried whenever she had felt inclined, during the whole of her unhappy, stormy life. But she usually cried for a purpose. This was different. Something, probably the amazing matter-of-factness of her brother, had touched the springs of her self-pity. At one step he had spanned all that had happened in the last twenty years. He was so entirely unchanged, while she--his eyes were as clear as ever, his fitness obvious at a glance, and his face scarcely lined. He represented all that she had lost, all that was sane and clean and wholesome. He reminded her of childish cricket, and nursery teas, and days on the river, and May Week, and clean young men in flannels. She had not met a man of his type since she had left her husband. She loved the faint scent of lavender that lingered in the fresh folds of the handkerchief he presently offered her. She wondered if it would be possible for her to go back with him, into the well-ordered life that he and his kind led, away from the shoddy women who had been her companions for years and the men who were rotten to the core.

"It has been a shock to you," Eric said. "I should have warned you."

She shook her head. It wasn't that. What it was she didn't feel capable of telling him now.

She wiped her eyes and cheeks recklessly with his handkerchief. Her make-up was ruined, and for the moment she didn't care, but presently at the sight of the well-filled restaurant she pulled herself together, and while Eric ordered dinner she busied herself repairing her haggard mask. No matter how badly Connie was looking, people always observed that she was a woman who had once been very beautiful. She joined him at the table in a few minutes, looking as though tears were as foreign to her nature as to a statue's.

It is characteristic of Connie's sort that they forget they have made a