Paris: The Novel

pieds
, “He breaks my feet.” And this new confidence with the language made a difference in their relationship.
    He began to converse with her.
    He’d talked before, of course. But when he sat down on the sofa beside her at Aunt Éloïse’s apartment and turned to her, and looked into her face seriously with his handsome eyes and asked what she thought of the Dreyfus affair, or some other piece of current news, or whether she liked a particular painting by Manet, and why, she experienced two reactions.
    She felt short of breath. It wasn’t the questions. It was the fact of his presence, so close to her, the fact that her heart would palpitate, she hardly knew why. She managed never to blush; she was grateful for that. She made herself concentrate very hard on everything he said as if he were a teacher in a classroom, and made herself think hard before she replied. That got her through.
    “You look a bit distressed sometimes, when you’re talking to Hadley,” Marc told her. “But you mustn’t mind him. It seems the American girls are used to discussing all kinds of things and having their own opinions in a way that men wouldn’t care for here.”
    But the other reaction she experienced was even stranger to her.
    It was a thrill of a new kind of excitement. She felt uplifted, as if this stranger from another world was taking her into a new and larger life. To a place where she could grow, like an exotic plant, become a person she had never dreamed of being before.
    So when Marc asked her if she was still finding his friend a little difficult, she replied: “No. He’s American, but I’m getting used to it.”

    Early in May, Aunt Éloïse announced that she and Marie were coming to visit Marc in his studio. They came late in the afternoon. The light was good, and it looked as if Marc had tidied the place up before their coming. Against one wall was a settee and chair where visitors could sit, and a low table on which he’d set out some refreshments. His easel stood about twenty feet away, with a low dais and chair for a sitter. Stacked against the far wall were two sets of canvases, one set face out, the other reversed. Beside them was a plan chest for drawings, a roll of canvas and a pile of stretchers.
    “This portrait,” he showed them the painting on the easel, “is almost complete. What do you think?”
    The picture showed a slim, pale woman in a long dress, her unsmiling face half turned toward the viewer. The effect was one of conventionalformality, yet there was a hint of ambiguity in the depiction, as if it were the frontispiece of a short story that the audience was waiting to be told.
    “Who is she?” asked Marie.
    “Mademoiselle Ney, the daughter of a lawyer. Father got me the commission, which was good of him.”
    “There is something hidden yet sensual about this woman,” Aunt Éloïse remarked.
    “Really?” Marc looked at her. “How interesting you should say that. I can’t see it myself. She is highly respectable, I assure you. And her father is paying handsomely for it.”
    “No doubt,” said his aunt, drily. “May we see some more?”
    For ten minutes or so he showed them paintings, drawings, sketches, of people, landscapes, animals, some finished, others not.
    “Well, Marc, I can see you’ve been working. And I am very glad of it. Are you happy in your work?”
    “I am.”
    “And what of those?” Aunt Éloïse indicated the stacked canvases.
    “Oh. Things I’ve abandoned. Canvases I’m going to paint over.”
    “May we see them? You never know, Marc, artists are not always right about their own work. There may be something good in there.”
    “Absolutely not.” He gave his aunt a hard look. “There’s nothing there that I wish you and Marie to see.”
    Aunt Éloïse bowed her head.
    “I understand, Marc,” she said. “An artist must always protect his reputation.”
    Aunt Éloïse seemed well pleased with the visit, Marie thought. As for herself, she was delighted.
    As they were leaving, she noticed Aunt Éloïse slip a roll of banknotes into Marc’s hand. Her aunt thought she wouldn’t see, but she did.
    “Why did you give Marc all that money?” she asked after they had left.
    “Oh,” said Aunt Éloïse, with scarcely a moment’s hesitation, “I owed him for a painting he bought for me.” But Marie wasn’t sure that this was true.

    It was two weeks later that her father told Marie he had received a letter from Roland de Cygne.
    “He writes