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And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "Petite Fille de Tombouctou." There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing.
Perhaps nothing wholly natural could have affected her in quite the same way. There was something of the art of a Ferdinand Rades in the art which had created that island, had set it just where it was.
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously: "If only Rades had not sung Petite Fille de Tombouctou!" That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such music was cruel when life went wrong. "Why won't he come?
When he saw Miss Deans the stout man looked humorously sarcastic. Max Elliot wanted Mrs. Shiffney to come near to the dais, but she refused, and sat down by the door. Rades whispered to her and she laughed again. Max Elliot went close to Millie Deans. She frowned at her accompanist, who began to play, looking sensitive. Mr. Brett leaned against the wall looking critical.
Shiffney, large, powerful and glittering with jewels, came into a box immediately opposite to theirs, accompanied by Ferdinand Rades, Paul Lane, and a very smart, very French, and very ugly woman, who was covered thickly with white paint, and who looked like all the feminine intelligence of Paris beneath her perfectly-dressed red hair.
"Hush hush, please!" said Max Elliot, loudly. "'Sh 'sh 'sh! Monsieur Rades is going to sing." He bent to Rades. "What is it? Monsieur Rades will sing Le Moulin, and Le Retour de Madame Blague." There was a ripple of applause, and Mrs. Shiffney hastily made her way to a chair just in front of the piano, sat down on it, and gazed at Rades, who turned and stared at her.
"It isn't a real soprano," said someone in a husky voice. "It's a forced-up mezzo." Beneath them Millie Deans was standing by Mrs. Shiffney, who was saying: "Charming! No, I haven't heard Crêpe de Chine. I don't care much for Fournier's music. He imitates the Russians. Such a pity! Are you really going back to-morrow? Good-bye, then! Now, Rades, be amiable! Give us Enigme." Mr.
The peculiar singing of Ferdinand Rades, which had upon hearers much of the effect made upon readers by the books of Pierre Loti, had excited and quickened her imagination. Secretly Charmian was romantic, though she seldom seemed so. She longed after wonders, and was dissatisfied with the usual. Yet she was capable of expecting wonders to conform to a standard to which she was accustomed.
What a stroke of genius!" Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach in the supper room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves. Margot and her sister Kit were extremely well known in London.
You would like her. I know that. But perhaps you'll refuse to meet her. Do you know my secret name for you? I call you the Great Refuser." Heath flushed and glanced at Mrs. Mansfield. "I have my work, you see." "We heard such strange music in Algiers," she answered. "I suppose it was ugly. But it suggested all sorts of things to me. Adelaide wished Monsieur Rades was with us.
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