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Updated: June 2, 2025
Just as they were beginning to suck iced lemonade up straws a delightful caprice of Madame Piriac's, well suited to catch Audrey's taste the door opened softly, and a tall, very dark, bearded man, appreciably older than Madame Piriac, entered with a kind of soft energy, and Mr. Gilman followed him. "Ah! My friend!" murmured Madame Piriac. "You give me pleasure.
The tone of Madame Piriac's question was unexceptionable; it took account of Audrey's mourning attire, and of her youthfulness; but Audrey could formulate no answer to it. Instead of speaking she gave a touch to her veil, and it dropped before her piquant, troubled, inscrutable face like a screen.
She said not a word to him about her departure the next afternoon, and he made no reference to it. As the most imposing automobile moved splendidly away, Mr. Gilman held open the door of Madame Piriac's vehicle. Mr. Gilman sat down opposite to the women. In the enclosed space the rumour of his heavy breathing was noticeable.
She was thinking about Musa's intractability and inexcusable rudeness, and about what she should do in the matter of Madame Piriac's impending visit to Audrey Moze at Flank Hall, and through the texture of these difficult topics she could see, as it were, shining the sprightly simplicity, the utter ingenuousness, the entirely reliable fidelity of Mr. Gilman.
She would not go to Madame Piriac's as a raw girl, overdone with money, who could only speak one language and who knew nothing at all of this our planet. She would go, if she went, as a young woman of the world who could hold her own in any drawing-room, be it Madame Piriac's or another.
"She would if she could." "I should so like to have seen her again," said Audrey eagerly. She was so relieved at Madame Piriac's not coming that she felt she could afford to be eager. And Monsieur Foa, a little distance off, threw a sign into the duologue, and called: "You permit me? Your dress ... Exquise! Exquise! And these pigs of French persist in saying that the English lack taste!"
Gilman sat intent and straight upright in Madame Piriac's box and behaved just as though Bach himself was present. He understood nothing of Bach, but he could be trusted to behave with benevolence. The music suddenly ceased. The Chaconne was finished. The gallery of enthusiasts still applauded with vociferation, with mystic faith, with sublime obstinacy.
Her evening dress made Audrey doubt whether after all her own was the genuine triumph which she had supposed; in Madame Piriac's boudoir, and close by Madame Piriac, it had disconcertingly the air of being an ingenious but unconvincing imitation of the real thing.
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