“I suppose we are, Odette. Except Gabrielle.” He suddenly included Anthea in the conversation with that curiously boyish smile.
“I, monsieur?” Anthea opened her eyes rather wide. “Why should I be an exception?”
“Because you don’t really belong to this world, of course. That is why you wear all the subtly unsophisticated models well. And the wedding dress. Gradually you will change”—he gave her a half amused, half discontented look—“and then I shall no longer design wedding dresses for you in the soft, cloudy materials. It will have to be satins and taffetas and tissues. Possibly even velvet——” Both his tone and his glance were changing, as though, in his mind’s eye, he already saw a slightly older, more sophisticated Anthea before him.
“And suppose I do not change, monsieur?” Anthea spoke softly, but, in some odd way, challengingly.
“You are bound to, petite. That is what life does to us,” Florian told her drily.
“Some sort of change—yes. But not necessarily such a change as you suggest. One can also, I suppose, become warmer and richer in personality, instead of colder and—more arid.”
“But one cannot remain unknowing.” He still spoke half smilingly, but with an undercurrent of something like bitterness. “It is because you are so—so unknowing that you can look at the world so wide-eyed—and be taken in by the Héloïses and the—what was it?—the Michaels. And wear my wedding dress the way you do,” he finished with a short laugh.
“You make me sound very simple,” Anthea protested, not too pleased.
“Eh, mon dieu, why not?” exclaimed Florian impatiently. “What do you suppose is the rarest thing in the whole of this shattered, cynical, unbelieving world of today? Simplicity, of course. Simplicity in its basic, classic, lost sense. You have it, mon enfant. That is the whole basis of your appeal. Though it might be better for yourself if you were capable of a few suspicions,” he added, with a sort of half-cynical regret.
Anthea was silent for a moment. Then some mischievous, daring impulse which she could not possibly explain to herself prompted her to say,
“So you think I am incapable of suspicion, Monsieur?”
“Almost entirely.” Florian’s cool, quick glance had already gone to the wrist-watch that ruled his life at the salon, and he moved to stand up again.
“You make me ashamed, monsieur,” Anthea said softly. “For I actually entertained some suspicions towards you.”
“Towards me?” Half startled, half amused, he looked at her again, his attention wholly recaptured. “In what way, petite?”
“It was very ungenerous of me.” She bent her head, so that her fair hair fell forward, shadowing her face a little. “When you gave me the green dress, I was at first so happy. I thought only a great man would be so generous in those circumstances. And then—I am sorry now—I wondered if even a great man might have some ulterior motive.”
There was the oddest silence. Then Florian said abruptly,
“Look up. And stop playacting.”
She looked up immediately, a good deal startled by the fact that he saw through her so easily.
“You did not think of that on your own,” he told her. “Only—someone put the idea into your head, and you thought this would be an amusing way of finding out the truth.”
“Oh, Monsieur Florian——” She was a good deal ashamed of herself by now.
“I gave you the dress, mon enfant, because I wished to give you pleasure,” he stated slowly and categorically. “There was no ulterior motive——”
“Oh, Monsieur Florian!” she said again remorsefully.
“—though I suppose there might well have been,” he added with characteristic realism
“Sans doute,” put in Odette with equal realism.
But Anthea was not for realism at the moment. She was overwhelmed to think that she had met generosity with suspicion. Still more that she should have made her suspicions a basis for some rather unworthy playacting, as he had called it.
“This time I am truly ashamed,” she said and, coming over, she took both Monsieur Florian’s hands in hers, which seemed to surprise him not a little. “Please forgive me. You’re quite right. It wasn’t my impulse to distrust your wonderful gift. But afterwards I was not proof against the suggestion. I feel very mean about it—and would like to thank you all over again for your—your goodness to me over the whole incident.”
“You have a very charming way of making amends, petite, for suspicions which you had every right to entertain,” Florian said. Then he glanced down at the hands which still held his and, raising them, kissed them very lightly, one after the other, before firmly withdrawing his own fingers,
“Odette”—he turned to the other girl—“I need you in my work-room in ten minutes.”
“Yes, monsieur,” Odette said, and looked thoughtfully after him as he went out of the room. Then, as the door closed behind him, she remarked to Anthea, “Four years and two months I have worked for Florian, and I have never seen him do that before.”
“Do what?”
“Kiss the hand of a mannequin.”
“O-oh. Well, it was a rather special occasion.”
“Was it?” Odette said, and swung her feet to the floor. “And yet you never voiced your real suspicions to him. So that you are completely in the dark still about them.”
“What do you mean?” Anthea came and sat beside Odette, who was beginning to apply her very light make-up.
“You never really thought Florian used the dress as a first bait to lure you into a naughty situation,” Odette said, smiling at Anthea in the glass with an air of friendly scorn. “That was someone else’s idea, as he said, and you just toyed with it a little. What you really want to know is—Does he take you to the Opéra on Friday night for your pleasure, or for purposes of publicity, or merely to make Peroni think that he has a younger and prettier and more piquante girl to play off against her?”
Anthea was silent for a moment. Then she said,
“I couldn’t ask him any more.”
“No, of course not. Do you think he didn’t know that too?”
“Oh! Do you mean he deliberately lulled any suspicions I might have in the future by making me ashamed of those I hadn’t really had anyway?”
“I don’t know.” Odette laughed exasperatedly. “I tell you—no one ever really knows what Florian is thinking. You can suspect him of the darkest designs, if you want to. Or you can set him up in your mind as the most romantic and generous of creatures. The one theory is as likely to be right as the other. I must go now.”
And, with a final touch of colour on her lips, she got up from the long dressing-bench and went off, leaving Anthea once more in a mood of sober reflection.
Before she could get very far, however, someone looked in to say that she was wanted on the telephone. And, with the delighted certainty that it must be Roger calling her, she jumped up and hurried to the telephone.
It seemed a long time—really, much too long—since she had heard his pleasant, matter-of-fact tones, and she felt her spirits rocket as he said,
“Hello there! Have you got any time to spare on a minor diplomat this evening?”
“Oh, Roger, I’d love to.”
“I’ve parked—my family responsibilities with someone else this evening, and though I’m working late and can’t actually fetch you from Florian’s, I thought we might have a bite together and perhaps do a late film, if you would like that.”
“Of course I should. Shall we meet at our usual place?”
“If that’s all right for you. Eight o’clock.”
“Eight o’clock.”
“Here, what’s this about your going to the Opéra with Florian?” Roger enquired, just as she was about to ring off.
“Nothing—really. I’m just going to show off a model of his. Besides—— Oh, well, I’ll tell you all about it when we meet.”
He laughed and agreed to this. Then he did ring off, and Anthea went off to the routine busi
ness of the day.
In the late afternoon she was summoned to Monsieur Florian’s work-room. And here, under the eagle eye of Mademoiselle Charlotte, the green lace dress had its final fitting.
Then the cloak was brought. And Anthea, who had awaited this moment with the liveliest curiosity, found she could not even cry out at the sight of it. Her ridiculous, inexplicable reaction was that she felt a lump in her throat.
Here Florian had used the most luxurious, the most queenly, the most opulent of furs for a design of such exquisite and deceptive simplicity that one could think only of the purity of untouched snow or the innocence of childhood.
“Monsieur, every woman in the Opéra will long for it,” Anthea said, almost in a whisper.
“Few, however, will be able to afford it,” commented Mademoiselle Charlotte with a grim chuckle.
“Few, also, would be able to wear it,” Florian said, as the cloak was put round Anthea’s shoulders, and she slightly inclined her cheek to the exquisite caress of the collar.
“Nonsense. It will go to some knowledgeable harpy with a rich boy-friend,” Mademoiselle Charlotte declared, with no belief in the rightness of things.
“Then it will look quite a different thing, of course,” Monsieur Florian said calmly.
“Oh, but what a shame!” Anthea exclaimed. “It’s like—like cruelty to children. Couldn’t you refuse to sell, if it was for someone perfectly horrid?”
“I could, mademoiselle. But I should not be the successful man I am if I did business on those lines,” Florian assured her with a smile. While Mademoiselle Charlotte cackled derisively at the idea.
“There is no sentiment in business,” she told Anthea, and gave her a slight push, as though she were a child who had said embarrassingly silly things in company.
“But on Friday night it will look as it should,” Florian said, surveying Anthea from all angles. “That should do.”
She was not quite sure if he meant that the model was satisfactory or that even a white mink cloak must be satisfied with one crowded hour of glorious life. But she smiled at him over her shoulder and knew suddenly that she was going to enjoy Friday night.
That evening, when she met Roger, there seemed to be such a lot to tell him. And yet it was not quite a week since she had seen him.
Already, of course, he knew something of Eve’s, visit to the salon—though only her side of it. And Anthea filled in the details, and explained about Florian’s sudden intervention with the statement that she was accompanying him to the Opéra.
“And was that the first you’d heard of it?”
“Of course.”
“His rather eccentric way of letting you know the great man had decided?” suggested Roger, frowning as though he were not altogether pleased over the idea.
“Oh, no! He thought Eve was ‘needling’ me—which, of course, she was—by telling me she was going with you, and suggesting I should trail along as an unwanted third. But Florian thought it was even worse, because he had an idea that you were Michael,” Anthea explained not very lucidly.
“What?” For the first time in her knowledge of him, Anthea saw Roger really annoyed.
“Oh, Roger—it’s all rather confusing——”
“It must be.”
“I hope you’re not really mad about it, but, you see, right away in the beginning—on the day of the Opening—I told Florian that the man who’d turned me down was there in the salon——”
“Good lord! Was that necessary?”
“Oh, it just came out. The way these things do sometimes when you’re excited or under a great strain. Then something I said later made him think Michael—the man concerned—had some doubts about his second choice and——”
“I say—you confide rather a lot in your employer, don’t you?” Roger put in.
“It’s rather difficult to explain. Anyway, he was left with the idea that—that I still saw my ex-fiancé, to use a perfectly horrible expression, only I don’t know how else to make it clear. Then when he saw me with you at the ball he thought you were he.”
“But didn’t this wonderfully observant chap who never misses a detail of anyone’s dress, by all accounts, even notice that you called me ‘Roger’?” Roger enquired rather crossly.
“Oh, yes, of course. But he didn’t know Michael’s name, so he still went on thinking you were the man in the case. I’m terribly sorry, Roger.”
“Well, considering all the confidential information you seemed to get across to him, I should have thought you could let him know I’m not the confounded idiot who turned you down for Eve Armoor.”
“He does know now,” Anthea explained rather meekly. “But he didn’t at the time when Eve made her spiteful suggestion. He thought she was making hay of my feelings as well as my pride. That was why he coolly turned down the invitation for me, with the information that I was already going to the performance that night with the greatest designer in Paris.”
“Yes—I see. Did you tell him afterwards that he’d got your men friends a bit mixed?”
“Of course. It was the first opportunity I had.”
“And what did he say?” Roger enquired curiously.
Anthea told him that Florian had muttered that the English were incomprehensible.
Roger laughed at this, and she found she was extraordinarily happy to have his usual good humour restored.
They had a quick, pleasant meal together after that, and then went to a small, nearby cinema which made a feature of showing English films. There, rather crowded together in the back row, they shared that curious, nostalgic pleasure which comes to all those in even the most temporary exile who suddenly see once more a slice of that life which reaches down to their very roots.
It was really not a specially good film, but it portrayed types and used expressions which could belong only to the British. For the first time for many weeks, Anthea felt homesick, and leaning a little against Roger’s arm, she was glad that at least she had him here in this lovely, fascinating, but alien city.
They walked home together through the soft night air, past the Eiffel Tower, which seemed to reach away almost to the stars, and along the side of the Champ de Mars, to the street where Anthea lived.
The harmony between them was so complete that after a while he took her hand, and swung it lightly as they walked along. She liked the feel of his strong fingers on hers and, smiling a little mischievously—but speaking on a note of satisfaction—she said,
“You’re not cross with me any more, are you?”
“Cross with you, Anthea? I was never cross with you.” He sounded genuinely astonished.
“Oh, yes, you were. I noticed it because I’ve never seen you really annoyed before. You were as mad as anything, because I’d let Florian think you were Michael,” she reminded him.
“Oh—well——” He evidently recalled the mood, but laughed. “Anyone would be,” he declared.
She glanced sideways at him and smiled.
“Why, Roger?”
“I told you. Who do you suppose wants to be confused with a man who could prefer Eve to you?” he retorted lightly. “It’s an insult to one’s intelligence.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Come to that,” Roger went on, warming to his subject, “who wants to be taken for a cold-hearted, self-centred sort of cuss like Michael? Why——Oh, I say, I’m frightfully sorry. I forgot for a moment.”
“It’s all right.”
“But I do apologize.” Roger looked extremely contrite. “It was a bit tasteless of me to brag about my view of him when yours can hardly be the same.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said again, and blinked her lashes suddenly, like someone who had seen a very bright light.
They strolled on the last few yards together, then he bade her good night, but waited, as usual, until she had opened the big door and stepped into the dimly lighted hall. Then, with a final smile at him, she closed the door and crossed to the lift.
It groaned slowly and reluctantly upwards, as was its ill-tempered wont, but Anthea was too used to it to notice. Besides, she was sunk in thought. Even when she climbed the final flight of stairs and admitted herself to her room, she still seemed oblivious of her surroundings.
“I suppose this is how it comes to one—suddenly,” she said aloud. And, without putting on the light, she crossed to the open window and looked up into the star-spangled canopy of the night sky which hung over Paris. “Cold-hearted and self-centred.” Those were the words Roger had used. And, as he said them, she knew they described exactly the way she saw Michael now.
The change had come gradually, of course. She had not even noticed that it no longer hurt to think of him. And then that it was no longer a habit to think of him. Only when Roger applied these curt, condemning phrases, she saw that they fitted.
No wonder he had chosen Eve. She was right for him.
And in this final discovery, Anthea realized that the chains of her devotion to Michael had been struck from her.
Chapter Nine
Anthea opened her eyes and looked at the sunshine pouring in through the window. Then suddenly she remembered it was Friday, and, with a little cry of delight, jumped out of bed.
Today—or rather, tonight—she was to wear the white mink cloak, and go with Florian to the Opéra. Even Paris glowed with fresh colour, scintillated with fresh sparkle, because of it. How infinitely fortunate she was! She, the girl who had walked the Avenue des Champs-Élysées wondering what on earth she was going to do with her life.
And now, in addition, she was even no longer brokenhearted. She was free—free—free! And going to the Opéra with Monsieur Florian. She always came back to that as though it were a recurring refrain.
At work that day she could not altogether conceal her lightness of heart, but she did manage to subdue her very natural sense of gratification at having been chosen for this occasion. To have shown that would have been to invite jealousy, even from those less susceptible than Héloïse. As it was, there were a few oblique references to favouritism. But as Anthea was genuinely very well liked, these were spontaneous and passing, rather than calculated or intentional.
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