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Although he put it to me very delicately, as he had always conveyed his criticism of Elodie, the fact that struck a clear and astounding note through his general bewilderment, was the unprecedented reckless extravagance of the economical Elodie. There was the omnibus. There was the train.
Elodie, on beholding him, clutched a bursting corsage with both hands, uttered a little squeak and bolted like an overfed rabbit. Bakkus laughed out loud. "What the devil ? Is this the relaxation of the great or the aberrations of the asylum?" Andrew grinned and shook hands. "My dear old chap. I'm so glad you've come back. Sit down."
And while Andrew, now unreproached, frowned, pencil in hand and notebook by his side, over the strategics of the Franco-Prussian War, Elodie, always in her slatternly wrapper, spent enraptured hours in putting her feathered troupe through their pretty tricks or in playing with them foolishly as one plays with a dog. Thus their midway mutual grievances imperceptibly vanished.
As Elodie had received no official news of his death which is astonishing in view of the French Republic's accuracy in tracing the etat civil of even her obscurest citizens she presumed that he was still alive somewhere in the Shadow Land in which exist monks and Papuans and swell-mobsmen and other members of the human race with whom she had no concern.
Since the day their fingers had met over the embroidery and their breaths had mingled, he had never been back to the Amour peintre. For a whole week his proud stoicism and his timidity, which grew more extreme every day, had kept him away from Élodie.
"What about Germany?" "Germany's never going to sacrifice her commercial position by going to war. Among great powers war is a lunatic anachronism." "Oh, mon Dieu," cried Elodie, "now you're talking politics." Bakkus took her hand which held a fork on which was prodded a gherkin they were at lunch and raised it to his lips. "Pardon, chere madame. It was this maniac of an Andre. He is mad or worse.
"All the same," added Elodie, "it is very dangerous la-bas, mon cheri and I don't want you to get killed." "All the glory and none of the death," said Bakkus. "Conducted on those principles, warfare would be ideal employment for the young. But you would be going back to the Middle Ages, when, if a knight were killed, he was vastly surprised and annoyed. Personally I hate the war.
The singer had gone grey, and that touch of venerability gave him an air of greater distinction, as a broken down tragedian, than he possessed when Andrew had first met him ten years or so before. Elodie could bandy jests with him, but when he spoke with authority she listened overawed. "My dear Andre," she replied to his remark. "I am not a fool.
And that was the end of it. Andrew went back to Paris by the first train in the morning, and Elodie continued to dance in Avignon.
The young prince knew that his uncle loved him, knew that the Grand Duke desired nothing on earth so much as the happiness of his beloved sister's only son and yet at this crisis of the Boy's life, even his uncle was as powerless to help as was Paul Verdayne, the Englishman. "The Princess Elodie!" he grumbled. "Who the devil is this Princess Elodie, anyway?
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