"We," Palmer hastened on, "are on a sort of postponed honeymoon.I didn't announce the marriage--didn't want to have my friends out of pocket for presents.Besides, they'd have sent us stuff fit only to furnish out a saloon or a hotel--and we'd have had to use it or hurt their feelings.My wife's a Western girl--from Indiana.She came on to study for the stage.But"--he laughed delightedly--"I persuaded her to change her mind.""You are from the West?" said Brent in the formal tone one uses in addressing a new acquaintance."So am I.But that's more years ago than you could count.I live in New York--when I don't live here or in the Riviera."The moment had passed when Susan could, without creating an impossible scene, admit and compel Brent to admit that they knew each other.What did it matter? Was it not best to ignore the past? Probably Brent had done this deliberately, assuming that she was beginning a new life with a clean slate.
"Been here long?" said Brent to Palmer.
As he and Palmer talked, she contrasted the two men.Palmer was much the younger, much the handsomer.Yet in the comparison Brent had the advantage.He looked as if he amounted to a great deal, as if he had lived and had understood life as the other man could not.The physical difference between them was somewhat the difference between look of lion and look of tiger.Brent looked strong; Palmer, dangerous.She could not imagine either man failing of a purpose he had set his heart upon.She could not imagine Brent reaching for it in any but an open, direct, daring way.
She knew that the descendant of the supple Italians, the graduate of the street schools of stealth and fraud, would not care to have anything unless he got it by skill at subtlety.
She noted their dress.Brent was wearing his clothes in that elegantly careless way which it was one of Freddie's dreams--one of the vain ones--to attain.Brent's voice was much more virile, was almost harsh, and in pronouncing some words made the nerves tingle with a sensation of mingled irritation and pleasure.Freddie's voice was manly enough, but soft and dangerous, suggestive of hidden danger.She compared the two men, as she knew them.She wondered how they would seem to a complete stranger.Palmer, she thought, would be able to attract almost any woman he might want; it seemed to her that a woman Brent wanted would feel rather helpless before the onset he would make.
It irritated her, this untimely intrusion of Brent who had the curious quality of making all other men seem less in the comparison.Not that he assumed anything, or forced comparisons; on the contrary, no man could have insisted less upon himself.Not that he compelled or caused the transfer of all interest to himself.Simply that, with him there, she felt less hopeful of Palmer, less confident of his ability to become what he seemed--and go beyond it.There are occasional men who have this same quality that Susan was just then feeling in Brent--men whom women never love yet who make it impossible for them to begin to love or to continue to love the other men within their range.
She was not glad to see him.She did not conceal it.Yet she knew that he would linger--and that she would not oppose.She would have liked to say to him: "You lost belief in me and dropped me.I have begun to make a life for myself.Let me alone.Do not upset me--do not force me to see what I must not see if I am to be happy.Go away, and give me a chance."But we do not say these frank, childlike things except in moments of closest intimacy--and certainly there was no suggestion of intimacy, no invitation to it, but the reverse, in the man facing her at the front of the box.
"Then you are to be in Paris some time?" said Brent, addressing her.
"I think so," said Susan.
"Sure," cried Palmer."This is the town the world revolves round.I felt like singing `Home, Sweet Home' as we drove from the station.""I like it better than any place on earth," said Brent.
"Better even than New York.I've never been quite able to forgive New York for some of the things it made me suffer before it gave me what I wanted.""I, too," said Freddie."My wife can't understand that.She doesn't know the side of life we know.I'm going to smoke a cigarette.I'll leave you here, old man, to entertain her."When he disappeared, Susan looked out over the house with an expression of apparent abstraction.Brent--she was conscious--studied her with those seeing eyes--hazel eyes with not a bit of the sentimentality and weakness of brown in them."You and Palmer know no one here?""Not a soul."
"I'll be glad to introduce some of my acquaintances to you--French people of the artistic set.They speak English.
And you'll soon be learning French."
"I intend to learn as soon as I've finished my fall shopping.""You are not coming back to America?"
"Not for a long time."
"Then you will find my friends useful."
She turned her eyes upon his."You are very kind," said she.
"But I'd rather--we'd rather--not meet anyone just yet."His eyes met hers calmly.It was impossible to tell whether he understood or not.After a few seconds he glanced out over the house."That is a beautiful dress," said he."You have real taste, if you'll permit me to say so.I was one of those who were struck dumb with admiration at the Ritz tonight.""It's the first grand dress I ever possessed," said she.
"You love dresses--and jewels--and luxury?"
"As a starving man loves food."
"Then you are happy?"
"Perfectly so--for the first time in my life.""It is a kind of ecstasy--isn't it? I remember how it was with me.I had always been poor--I worked my way through prep school and college.And I wanted _all_ the luxuries.The more I had to endure--the worse food and clothing and lodgings--the madder I became about them, until I couldn't think of anything but getting the money to buy them.When I got it, I gorged myself....It's a pity the starving man can't keep on loving food--keep on being always starving and always having his hunger satisfied.""Ah, but he can."
