"What I want most is to learn French, and I'm going to begin to-morrow morning."

Nick was kindly confusing and shaming Miss Ingate with a short history and catechism of modern art, including such names as Vuillard, Bonnard, Pica.s.so, Signac, and Matisse--all very eagerly poured out and all very unnerving for Miss Ingate, whose directory of painting was practically limited to the names of Raphael, Sir Joshua, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough, Turner, Leighton, Millais, Gustave Dore and Frank d.i.c.ksee.

When, however, Nick referred to Monsieur Dauphin, Miss Ingate was as it were washed safely ash.o.r.e and said with a.s.surance: "Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh yes!"

Tommy listened for a few moments, and then, leaning across the table and lighting a cigarette, she said in an intimate undertone to Audrey: "I hope you don't _mind_ coming to the ball to-night. We really didn't know------"

She stopped. Her eyes, ferreting in Audrey's black, completed the communication.

Unnerved for the tenth of a second, Audrey recovered and answered:

"Oh, no! I shall like it very much."

"You've been up against life!" murmured Tommy in a melting voice, gazing at her. "But how wonderful all experience is, isn't it. I once had a husband.

We separated--at least, he separated. But I know the feel of being a wife."

Audrey blushed deeply. She wanted to push away all that sympathy, and she was exceedingly alarmed by the revelation that Tommy was an initiate. The widow was the merest schoolgirl once more. But her blush had saved her from a chat in which she could not conceivably have held her own.

"Excuse me being so clumsy," said Tommy contritely. "Another time." And she waved her cigarette to the waiter in demand for the bill.

It was after the orchestra had finished a tango, and while Tommy was examining the bill, that the first violin and leader, in a magenta coat, approached the table, and with a bow offered his violin deferentially to Musa. Many heads turned to watch what would happen. But Musa only shrugged his shoulders and with an exquisite gesture of refusal signified that he had to leave. Whereupon the magenta coat gracefully retired, starting a Hungarian dance as he went.

"Musa is supposed to be the greatest violinist in Paris--perhaps in the world," Tommy whispered casually to Audrey. "He used to play here, till Dauphin discovered him."

Audrey, overcome by this prodigious blow, trembled at the contemplation of her blind stupidity.

Beyond question, Musa now looked extremely important, vivid, masterful. She had been mistaking him for a nice, ornamental, useless boy.

CHAPTER X

FANCY DRESS

Just as the cafe-restaurant had been an intensification of ordinary life, so was the ball in Dauphin's studio an intensification of the cafe-restaurant. It had more colour, more noise, more music, more heat, more varied kinds of people, and, of course, far more riotous movement than the cafe-restaurant. The only quality in which the cafe-restaurant stood first was that of sustenance. Monsieur Dauphin had not attempted to rival the cafe-restaurant in the matter of food and drink. And that there was no general hope of his doing so could be deduced from the fact that many of the more experienced guests arrived with bottles, fruit, sausages, and sandwiches of their own.

When Audrey and her friends entered the precincts of the vast new white building in the Boulevard Raspail, upon whose topmost floor Monsieur Dauphin painted the portraits of the women of the French, British, and American plutocracies and aristocracies, a lift full of gay-coloured figures was just shooting upwards past the wrought-iron bal.u.s.trades of the gigantic staircase. Tommy and Nick stopped to speak to a columbine who hovered between the pavement and the threshold of the house.

"I don't know whether it's the grenadine or the lobster, or whether it's Paris," said Miss Ingate confidentially in the interval; "but I can scarcely tell whether I'm standing on my head or my heels."

Before the Americans rejoined them, the lift had returned and ascended with another covey of fancy costumes, including a man with a nose a foot long and a girl with bright green hair, dressed as an acrobat. On its next journey the lift held Tommy and Nick's party, and it held no more.

When the party emerged from it, they were greeted with a cheer, hoa.r.s.e and half human, by a band of light amateur mountebanks of both s.e.xes who were huddled in a doorway. Within a quarter of an hour Audrey and Miss Ingate, after astounding struggles in a dressing-room in which Nick alone saved their lives and reputations, appeared in j.a.panese disguise according to promise, and n.o.body could tell whether Audrey was maid, wife, or widow. She might have been a creature created on the spot, for the celestial purpose of a fancy-dress ball in Monsieur Dauphin's studio.

The studio was very large and rather lofty. Its walls had been painted by gifted pupils of Monsieur Dauphin and by fellow-artists, with scenes of life according to Catullus, Theocritus, Propertius, Martial, Petronius, and other cla.s.sical writers. It is not too much to say that the walls of the studio const.i.tuted a complete novelty for Audrey and Miss Ingate. Miss Ingate opened her mouth to say something, but, saying nothing, forgot for a long time to shut it again.

Chinese lanterns, electrically illuminated, were strung across the studio at a convenient height so that athletic dancers could prodigiously leap up and make them swing. Beneath this incoherent but exciting radiance the guests swayed and glided, in a joyous din, under the influence of an orchestra of men snouted like pigs and raised on a dais. In a corner was a spiral staircase leading to the flat roof of the studio and a view of all Paris. Up and down this corkscrew contending parties fought amiably for the right of way.

Tommy and Nick began instantly to perform introductions between Audrey and Miss Ingate and the other guests. In a few moments Audrey had failed to catch the names of a score and a half of people--many Americans, some French, some Argentine, one or two English. They were all very talented people, and, according to Miss Ingate, the most characteristically French were invariably either Americans or Argentines.

A telephone bell rang in the distance, and presently a toreador stood on a chair and pierced the music with a message of yells in French, and the room hugely guffawed and cheered.

"Where is the host?" Audrey asked.

"That's what the telephoning was about," said Tommy, speaking loudly against the hubbub. "He hasn't come yet. He had to rush off this afternoon to do pastel portraits of two Russian princesses at St. Germain, and he hasn't got back yet. The telephone was to say that he's started."

Then one of the introduced--it was a girl wearing a mask--took Audrey by the waist and whirled her strongly away and she was lost in the maze.

Audrey's first impulse was to protest, but she said to herself: "Why protest? This is what we're here for." And she gave herself up to the dance. Her partner held her very firmly, somewhat bending over her.

Neither spoke. Gyrating in long curves, with the other dancers swishing mysteriously about them like the dancers of a dream, and the music as far off as another world, they clung together in the rhythm and in the enchantment, until the music ceased.... The strong girl threw Audrey carelessly off, and walked away, breathing hard. And there was something in the strong girl's nonchalant and curt departure which woke a chord in Audrey's soul that had never been wakened before. Audrey could scarcely credit that she was on the same planet as Ess.e.x. She had many dances with men whom she hoped and believed she had been introduced to by Tommy, and no less than seventeen persons of either s.e.x told her in unusual English that they had heard she wanted to learn French and that they would like to teach her; and then she met Musa, the devil.

Musa, with an indolent and wistful smile, suggested the roof. Audrey was now just one of the throng, and quite unconscious of herself; she fought archly and gaily on the spiral staircase exactly as she had seen others do, and at last they were on the roof, and the silhouettes of other fantastic figures and of cowled chimney pots stood out dark against the vague yellow glow of the city beneath. While Musa was pointing out the historic landmarks to her, she was thinking how she could never again be the girl who had left Moze on the previous morning. And yet Musa was so natural and so direct that it was impossible to take him for anything but a boy, and hence Audrey sank back into early girlhood, talking spasmodically to Musa as she used in school days to talk to the brother of her school friend.

"I will teach you French," said Musa, unaware that he had numerous predecessors in the offer. "But will you play tennis with me in the gardens of the Luxembourg?"

Audrey said she would, and that she would buy a racket.

"Tell me about all those artists Miss Nickall spoke of," she said. "I must know about all the artists, and all the musicians, and all the authors. I must know all about them at once. I shan't sleep until I know all their names and I can talk French. I shan't _sleep_."

Musa began the catalogue. When a girl came and chucked him under the chin, he angrily slapped her face. Then, to avoid complications, they descended.

In the middle of the studio, wearing a silk hat, a morning coat, striped trousers, yellow gloves, and boots with spats, stood a smiling figure.

"_Voila_ Dauphin!" said Musa.

"Musa!" called Monsieur Dauphin, espying the youth on the staircase. Then he made a gesture to the orchestra: "Give him a violin!"

Audrey stood by Musa while he played a dance that n.o.body danced to, and when he had finished she was rather ashamed, under the curtain of wild cheering, because with her Ess.e.x incredulity she had not sufficiently believed in Musa's greatness.

"Permit your host to introduce himself," said a voice behind her, not in the correct English of a linguistic Frenchman, but in utterly English English. She had now descended to the floor of the studio.

Emile Dauphin raised his glossy hat, and then asked to be allowed to put it on again, as the company had decided that it was part of his costume. He had a delicious smile, at once respectful and intimate. Audrey had read somewhere that really great men were always simple and unaffected--indeed that it was often impossible to guess from their demeanour that, etc., etc.--and this experience of the first celebrity with whom she had ever spoken (except Musa, who was somehow only Musa) confirmed the statement, and confirmed also her young instinctive belief that what is printed must be true. She was beginning to feel the stealthy on-comings of fatigue, and certainly she was very nervous, but Monsieur Dauphin's quite particularly sympathetic manner, and her own sudden determination not to be a little blushing fool gave her new power.

"I can't express to you," he said, moving towards the dais and mesmerising her to keep by his side. "I can't express to you how sorry I was to be so late." He made the apology with lightness, but with sincerity. Audrey knew how polite the French were. "But truly circ.u.mstances were too much for me.

Those two Russian princesses--they came to me through a mutual friend, a dear old friend of mine, very closely attached also to them. They leave to-morrow morning by the St. Petersburg express, on which they have engaged a special coach. What was I to do? I tried to tear myself away earlier, but of course there were the portrait sketches to finish, and no doubt you know the usage of the best society in Russia."

"Yes," murmured Audrey.

"Come up on the dais, will you?" he suggested. "And let us survey the scene together."

They surveyed the scene together. The snouted band was having supper on the floor in a corner, and many of the guests also were seated on the floor.

Miss Ingate, intoxicated by the rapture of existence, and Miss Thompkins were carefully examining the frescoes on the walls. A young woman covered from head to foot with gold tinsel was throwing chocolates into Musa's mouth, or as near to it as she could.

"What a splendid player Mr. Musa is!" Audrey inaugurated her career as a woman of the world. "I doubt if I have ever heard such violin playing."

"I'm so glad you think so," replied Monsieur Dauphin. "Of course you know I'm very conceited about my painting. Anybody will tell you so. But beneath all that I'm not so sure. I often have the gravest doubts about my work.

But I never had any doubt that when I took Musa out of the orchestra in the Cafe de Versailles I was giving a genius to the world. And perhaps that's how I shall be remembered by posterity. And if it is I shall be content."

Never before had Audrey heard anybody connect himself with posterity, and she was very much impressed. Monsieur Dauphin was resigned and yet brave.

By no means convinced that posterity would do the right thing, he nevertheless had no grudge against posterity.