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"Because of her quarrel? Because she was ashamed of her part in it?" "Oh, no. There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. But the Farlows had found the place for her, and she didn't want them to know how suddenly she'd had to leave, and how badly Mrs. Murrett had behaved. She was in a terrible plight the woman had even kept back her month's salary.
Jimmy would get on, she fully believed that, especially when he had a sensible wife to help him; moreover, he was both good looking and sweet natured; consequently, she told herself that he was all she could have wished for. It had never occurred to her that he might have a past, because neither the Griersons, nor the Farlows, nor anyone in their world, ever had such things.
The Farlows themselves he a painter, she a "magazine writer" rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity: an elderly New England couple, with vague yearnings for enfranchisement, who lived in Paris as if it were a Massachusetts suburb, and dwelt hopefully on the "higher side" of the Gallic nature.
Even if the Farlows can't take me in, I can go to the hotel: it will cost less than staying here." She paused again and then exclaimed: "I ought to have thought of that sooner; I ought to have telegraphed yesterday! But I was sure I should hear from them today; and I wanted oh, I DID so awfully want to stay!" She threw a troubled look at Darrow.
The bell announcing the close of the entr'-acte shrilled through the cafe, and she sprang to her feet. "Oh, come, come! We mustn't miss it!" Instantly forgetful of the Farlows, she slipped her arm through his and turned to push her way back to the theatre. As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her companion.
She waited a moment, as though to be sure he had no more to add; then she said: "But the Farlows DID know; they told me all about it when they sent her to me." He flushed as if she had laid a deliberate trap for him. "They may know NOW; they didn't then " "That's no reason for her continuing now to make a mystery of having met you." "It's the only reason I can give you."
Point by point, she fell in with the suggestion, recognizing, in the light of their unexplained flight, that the Farlows might indeed be in a situation on which one could not too rashly intrude. Her concern for her friends seemed to have effaced all thought of herself, and this little indication of character gave Darrow a quite disproportionate pleasure.
I've always told you that what you wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of these nasty foreigners. Unluckily she couldn't, at the moment, put her hand on a sweet American; but she presently heard of Miss Viner through the Farlows, an excellent couple who live in the Quartier Latin and write about French life for the American papers.
And then, after a pause of brimming appreciation: "I wonder if you'll think me horrid? but it may be my only chance; and if you can't get places for us all, wouldn't you perhaps just take ME? After all, the Farlows may have seen it!" He had not, of course, thought her horrid, but only the more engaging, for being so natural, and so unashamed of showing the frank greed of her famished youth.
"Oh, you shall go somehow!" he had gaily promised her; and she had dropped back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed into the dimly-lit streets of the Farlows' quarter beyond the Seine... This little passage came back to him the next morning, as he opened his hotel window on the early roar of the Northern Terminus. The girl was there, in the room next to him.
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