"Such a person might have guessed it," answered Therese, seriously, "but I told her nothing except that this house had been given me in full property by our Rita.And I wouldn't have done that if she hadn't spoken to me of my sister first.I can't tell too many people about that.One can't trust Rita.I know she doesn't fear God but perhaps human respect may keep her from taking this house back from me.If she doesn't want me to talk about her to people why doesn't she give me a properly stamped piece of paper for it?"She said all this rapidly in one breath and at the end had a sort of anxious gasp which gave me the opportunity to voice my surprise.
It was immense.
"That lady, the strange lady, spoke to you of your sister first!" Icried.
"The lady asked me, after she had been in a little time, whether really this house belonged to Madame de Lastaola.She had been so sweet and kind and condescending that I did not mind humiliating my spirit before such a good Christian.I told her that I didn't know how the poor sinner in her mad blindness called herself, but that this house had been given to me truly enough by my sister.She raised her eyebrows at that but she looked at me at the same time so kindly, as much as to say, 'Don't trust much to that, my dear girl,' that I couldn't help taking up her hand, soft as down, and kissing it.She took it away pretty quick but she was not offended.But she only said, 'That's very generous on your sister's part,' in a way that made me run cold all over.I suppose all the world knows our Rita for a shameless girl.It was then that the lady took up those glasses on a long gold handle and looked at me through them till I felt very much abashed.She said to me, 'There is nothing to be unhappy about.Madame de Lastaola is a very remarkable person who has done many surprising things.
She is not to be judged like other people and as far as I know she has never wronged a single human being....' That put heart into me, I can tell you; and the lady told me then not to disturb her son.She would wait till he woke up.She knew he was a bad sleeper.I said to her: 'Why, I can hear the dear sweet gentleman this moment having his bath in the fencing-room,' and I took her into the studio.They are there now and they are going to have their lunch together at twelve o'clock.""Why on earth didn't you tell me at first that the lady was Mrs.
Blunt?"
"Didn't I? I thought I did," she said innocently.I felt a sudden desire to get out of that house, to fly from the reinforced Blunt element which was to me so oppressive.
"I want to get up and dress, Mademoiselle Therese," I said.
She gave a slight start and without looking at me again glided out of the room, the many folds of her brown skirt remaining undisturbed as she moved.
I looked at my watch; it was ten o'clock.Therese had been late with my coffee.The delay was clearly caused by the unexpected arrival of Mr.Blunt's mother, which might or might not have been expected by her son.The existence of those Blunts made me feel uncomfortable in a peculiar way as though they had been the denizens of another planet with a subtly different point of view and something in the intelligence which was bound to remain unknown to me.It caused in me a feeling of inferiority which I intensely disliked.This did not arise from the actual fact that those people originated in another continent.I had met Americans before.And the Blunts were Americans.But so little! That was the trouble.Captain Blunt might have been a Frenchman as far as languages, tones, and manners went.But you could not have mistaken him for one....Why? You couldn't tell.It was something indefinite.It occurred to me while I was towelling hard my hair, face, and the back of my neck, that I could not meet J.K.
Blunt on equal terms in any relation of life except perhaps arms in hand, and in preference with pistols, which are less intimate, acting at a distance - but arms of some sort.For physically his life, which could be taken away from him, was exactly like mine, held on the same terms and of the same vanishing quality.
I would have smiled at my absurdity if all, even the most intimate, vestige of gaiety had not been crushed out of my heart by the intolerable weight of my love for Rita.It crushed, it overshadowed, too, it was immense.If there were any smiles in the world (which I didn't believe) I could not have seen them.Love for Rita...if it was love, I asked myself despairingly, while Ibrushed my hair before a glass.It did not seem to have any sort of beginning as far as I could remember.A thing the origin of which you cannot trace cannot be seriously considered.It is an illusion.Or perhaps mine was a physical state, some sort of disease akin to melancholia which is a form of insanity? The only moments of relief I could remember were when she and I would start squabbling like two passionate infants in a nursery, over anything under heaven, over a phrase, a word sometimes, in the great light of the glass rotunda, disregarding the quiet entrances and exits of the ever-active Rose, in great bursts of voices and peals of laughter....
