a shifty court, to get to Lafayette. Helen knew it as a child who had
dodged these lessons from her patriotic father, but had enjoyed the
woods, the parks, the terraces, and particularly the restaurant at the
park gates. That day they took it like a boy and girl,--with the amused,
omniscient tolerance of youth for a past so inferior to the present.
Ostrander thought this gray-eyed, independent American-French girl far
superior to the obsequious filles d'honneur, whose brocades had rustled
through those quinquonces, and Helen vaguely realized the truth of her
fellow pupil's mischievous criticism of her companion that day at the
Louvre. Surely there was no classical statue here comparable to the
one-armed soldier-painter!
All this was as yet free from either sentiment or passion, and was only
the frank pride of friendship. But, oddly enough, their mere presence
and companionship seemed to excite in others that tenderness they had
not yet felt themselves. Family groups watched the handsome pair in
their innocent confidences, and, with French exuberant recognition of
sentiment, thought them the incarnation of Love. Something in
their manifest equality of condition kept even the vainest and
most susceptible of spectators from attempted rivalry or cynical
interruption. And when at last they dropped side by side on a sun-warmed
stone bench on the terrace, and Helen, inclining her brown head towards
her companion, informed him of the difficulty she had experienced in
getting gumbo soup, rice and chicken, corn cakes, or any of her favorite
home dishes in Paris, an exhausted but gallant boulevardier rose from a
contiguous bench, and, politely lifting his hat to the handsome couple,
turned slowly away from what he believed were tender confidences he
would not permit himself to hear.
But the shadow of the trees began to lengthen, casting broad bars across
the alle, and the sun sank lower to the level of their eyes. They were
quite surprised, on looking around a few moments later, to discover that
the gardens were quite deserted, and Ostrander, on consulting his watch,
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