Turtle Reader

She touched the rose at her breast. For a moment she seemed to forget him,
then quietly–”I thank you, I am very grateful.” She opened the book and,
plucking a petal from the rose, dropped it between the leaves. Then
looking up she said gently, “I cannot accept.”

V

It took Clifford a month to entirely recover, although at the [...]

After a while she took up her book again, but instead of reading began to
adjust a rose in her corsage. The rose was big and red. It glowed like
fire there over her heart, and like fire it warmed her heart, now
fluttering under the silken petals. Rue Barrée sighed again. She was very
happy. The sky was [...]

“Elliott, you are a true friend–”

“You make me ill,” replied the latter, folding his paper. “It’s just as I
thought,–you are tagging after some new petticoat again. And,” he
continued wrathfully, “if this is what you’ve kept me away from Julian’s
for,–if it’s to fill me up with the perfections of some little idiot–”

“Not idiot,” remonstrated Clifford gently.

“See [...]

“We know Selby,” said Elliott with emphasis.

“Yes,” said Rowden, “he gives receptions with floral decorations and
invites Clifford, while we sit on the stairs.”

“Yes, while the youth and beauty of the Quarter revel,” suggested Rowden;
then, with sudden misgiving; “Is Odette there?”

“See here,” demanded Elliott, “is Colette there?”

Then he raised his voice in a plaintive howl, “Are [...]

An hour later found him in the same chair, in the same position, his hat
and gloves still on, his stick in his hand, but he was silent, apparently
lost in contemplation of his boot toes, and his smile was less imbecile
and even a bit retrospective.

III

About five o’clock that afternoon, the little sad-eyed woman who fills the
position [...]

“These tulips are magnificent,” he observed, “and these hyacinths–” He
fell into a trance at the mere sight of the scented thickets.

“That,” murmured Rue, pointing to a splendid rose-bush with her furled
parasol, but in spite of her, her voice trembled a little. Selby noticed
it, more shame to him that he was listening, and the gardener noticed [...]

Elliott and Rowden, boiling with indignation, cried out, “And you!”

“I,” said Clifford blandly, “do fear to tread where you rush in.”

II

Twenty-four hours later Selby had completely forgotten Rue Barrée. During
the week he worked with might and main at the studio, and Saturday night
found him so tired that he went to bed before dinner and had [...]

The next day he did not appear, and Selby, who had counted on seeing him
at the studio, a thing which he learned later it was vanity to count on,
wandered back to the Latin Quarter alone.

Paris was still strange and new to him. He was vaguely troubled by its
splendour. No tender memories stirred his American bosom [...]

He took her in his arms, “Hush, what are you saying? Look,–look out at
the sunlight, the meadows and the streams. We shall be very happy in so
bright a world.”

She turned to the sunlight. From the window, the world below seemed very
fair to her.

Trembling with happiness, she sighed: “Is this the world? Then I have
never known [...]

The cab swung around the rue de Medici, turned into the rue de Vaugirard,
followed it to where it crosses the rue de Rennes, and taking that noisy
thoroughfare, drew up before the Gare Montparnasse. They were just in time
for a train and scampered up the stairway and out to the cars as the last
note from the [...]