Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/470

 hated to work) she had worked to learn all the things she should know. She had beaten Marise at her own game. She talked better French than she, so her diction teacher said; and ever so much more distinguished English—she never made those slips into Americanisms or Gallicisms that Marise did. At least not in conversation, sometimes she still thought in American. She knew ever so much more about dressing than Marise, and about lace, and about manners. She had come to the point at last of being sure of her manners, of being able to sit down, instinctively composing herself so that she would look well from all angles, of not having to think of how to shake hands or leave a room, any more than she thought of the adjustment of a gown that Joséphine had put on her. Whereas Marise still fumbled at the back of her neck at times to make sure of a hook, or had that common trick of feeling her hair to see if it were in order. Marise had stood still in all that, and she had gone forward to the goal. But as she reached it …!

How could she have thought for a moment that she cared a thing about him—he was horrible and rough and as American as—as—a typewriter! What made her care about such a man? She wouldn't have, if it had not been for Marise. It was Marise's fault. She never would have dreamed of looking at him if she hadn't seen that first evening at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's soirée that Marise had lost her head over him. That made her curious about him of course, and somehow before she knew it something about his eyes or smile—oh, it was as if she were bewitched that he should make her feel so, make her want and want and want till she ached, to have him look at her—and all the time he never looked away from Marise.

"There," said Joséphine, slipping out the hairpins, and taking up a handful of the bright hair to inspect it, "I believe—I believe," she pondered the matter profoundly, her dark, sharp intelligent face selflessly focussed on the problem, "I wonder if we ought to wash it a little oftener here than in Paris? There is more dust. But washing it takes the oil