"Oh, I don't pretend to be immune. We all—everybody who knows her—— You'll understand presently."
Ste. Marie turned his head a little and looked curiously at his friend, for he considered that he knew the not very expressive intonations of that young gentleman's voice rather well, and this was something unusual. He wondered what had been happening during his six months' absence from Paris.
"I dare say that's what I feel in the air, then," he said after a little pause. "It's not calamity. It's love.
"Or maybe," he said quaintly, "it's both. L'un n'empéche pas l'autre." And he gave an odd little shiver, as if that something in the air had suddenly blown chill upon him.
They were passing the corner of the Chamber of Deputies which faces the Pont de la Concorde. Ste. Marie pulled out his watch and looked at it.
"Eight-fifteen," said he. "What time are we asked for? Eight-thirty? That means nine. It's an English house and nobody will be in time. It's out of fashion to be prompt nowadays."
"I should hardly call the Marquis de Saulnes English, you know!" objected Hartley.
"Well, his wife is," said the other, "and they're altogether English in manner. Dinner won't be before nine. Shall we get out and walk across the bridge and up the Champs Elysées? I should like to, I think. I like to walk at this time of the evening—between the daylight and the dark."
Hartley nodded a rather reluctant assent, and Ste. Marie prodded the pear-shaped cocher in the back with his stick. So they got down at the approach to the bridge. Ste. Marie gave the cocher a piece of two francs and they turned away on foot. The pear-shaped one looked at the coin in his fat hand as if it was something unclean and contemptible, something to be despised. He glanced at the dial of his taximeter, which had registered one franc twenty-five, and pulled the flag up. He spat gloomily out into the street and his purple lips moved in words. He seemed to say something like: "Sale diable de métier!" which, considering the fact that he had just been overpaid, appears unwarrantably pessimistic in tone. Thereafter he spat again, picked up his reins and jerked them, saying—
"Hè, Jean Baptiste! Uip, uip!" The unemotional white horse turned up the boulevard, trotting evenly at its steady pace, head down, the little bell at its neck jingling pleasantly as it went. It occurs to me that the white horse was probably unique. I doubt that there was another horse in Paris rejoicing in that extraordinary name.
But the two young men walked slowly on across the Pont de la Concorde. They went in silence, for Hartley was thinking still of Miss Helen Benham and Ste. Marie was thinking of Heaven knows what. His gloom was unaccountable unless he had really meant what he said about feeling calamity in the air. It was very unlike him to have nothing to say. Midway of the bridge he stopped and turned to look out over the river, and the other man halted beside him. The dusk was thickening almost perceptibly, but it was yet far from dark. The swift river ran leaden beneath them, and the river boats, mouches and hirondelles, darted silently under the arches of the bridge, making their last trips for the day. Away to the west, where their faces were turned, the sky was still faintly washed with colour, lemon and dusky orange and pale thin green. A single long strip of cirrus cloud was touched with pink, a lifeless old rose, such as is popular among decorators for the silk hangings of a woman's boudoir. And black against this pallid wash of colours the Tour Eiffel stood high and slender and rather ghostly. By day it is an ugly thing, a preposterous iron finger upthrust by man's vanity against God's serene sky, but the haze of evening drapes it in a merciful semi-obscurity, and it is beautiful.
Ste. Marie leant upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him and eyes afar. He began to sing, à demi voix, a little phrase out of Louise,—an invocation to Paris—and the Englishman stirred uneasily beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top hat and evening clothes, and sing operatic airs while people passed back and forth behind you, was one of the things that are not done. He tried to imagine himself singing in the middle of Westminster Bridge at half-past eight of an evening, and he felt quite hot all over at the thought. It was not done at all he said to himself. He looked a little nervously at the people who were passing, and it seemed to him that they stared at him and at the unconscious Ste. Marie, though in truth they did nothing of the sort. He turned back and touched his friend on the arm, saying—
"I think we'd best be getting along, you know," but Ste. Marie was very far away and did not hear. So then he fell to watching the man's dark and handsome face, and to thinking how little the years at Eton and the year or two at Oxford had set any real stamp upon him. He would never be anything but Latin in spite of his Irish mother and his public school. Hartley thought what a pity that was. As Englishmen go he was not illiberal, but, no more than he could have altered the colour of his eyes, could he have believed that anything foreign would not be improved by becoming English. That was born in him, as it is born in most Englishmen, and it was a perfectly simple and honest belief. He felt a deeper affection for this handsome and volatile young man, whom all women loved and who bade fair to spend his life at their successive feet—for he certainly had never shown the slightest desire to take up any sterner employment—he felt a deeper affection for Ste. Marie than for any other man he knew, but he had always wished that Ste. Marie were an Englishman, and he had always felt a slight sense of shame over his friend's un-English ways.
After a moment he touched him again on the arm, saying—
"Come along! We shall be late, you know. You can finish your little concert another time."
"Eh!" cried Ste. Marie. "Quoi, donc?" He turned with a start.
"Oh yes!" said he. "Yes, come along! I was mooning. Allons! Allons, my old!" He took Hartley's arm and began to shove him along at a rapid walk.
"I will moon no more," he said. "Instead, you shall tell me about the wonderful Miss Benham whom everybody is talking of. Isn't there something odd connected with the family? I vaguely recall something unusual, some mystery or misfortune or something.
"But first a moment! One small moment, my old. Regard me that!" They had come to the end of the bridge and the great Place de la Concorde lay before them.
"In all the world," said Ste. Marie—and he spoke the truth—"there is not another such square. Regard it, mon brave! Bow yourself before it! It is a miracle."
The great bronze lamps were alight, and they cast reflections upon the still damp pavement about them. To either side the trees of the Tuileries gardens and of the Cours la Reine and the Champs Elysées lay in a solid black mass. In the middle the obelisk rose slender and straight, its pointed top black against the sky, and beneath the water of the Nereid fountains splashed and gurgled. Far beyond, the gay lights of the Rue Royale shone in a yellow cluster and, beyond these still, the tall columns of the Madeleine ended the long vista. Pedestrians and cabs crept across that vast space, and seemed curiously little, like black insects, and round about it all the eight cities of France sat atop their stone pedestals and looked on. Ste. Marie gave a little sigh of pleasure, and the two moved forward, bearing to the left, towards the Champs Elysées.
"And now," said he, "about these Benhams. What is the thing I cannot quite recall? What has happened to them?"
"I suppose," said the other man, "you mean the disappearance of Miss Benham's young brother, a month ago, before you returned to Paris. Yes, that was certainly very odd. That is, it was either very odd or very commonplace. And in either case the family is terribly cut up about it. The boy's name was Arthur Benham, and he was rather a young fool but not downright vicious, I should think. I never knew him at all well, but I know he spent his time chiefly at the Café de Paris and at the Olympia and at Longchamps and at Henry's Bar. Well, he just disappeared, that is all. He dropped completely out of sight between two days, and though the family has had a small army of detectives on his trail, they've not discovered the smallest clue. It's deuced odd altogether. You might think it easy to disappear like that but it's not."
"No—no," said Ste. Marie thoughtfully. "No, I should fancy not.
"This boy," he said after a pause, "I think I had seen him—had