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I have quite enough discouragement in my attempts at painting, as it is." M. Silvenoire was bowing low, as Mrs. Lessingham presented him. To his delight, he heard his own language fluently, idiomatically spoken; he remarked, too, that Mrs. Elgar had a distinct pleasure in speaking it. She seated herself, and flattered him into ecstasies by the respect with which she received his every word.
He sat swinging his leg. The snatch of uncomfortable sleep had left him pale and swollen-eyed, and his hair was tumbled. "Who was there to-night?" "Several new people. Amedee Silvenoire the dramatist, you know; an interesting man. He paid me the compliment of refraining from compliments on my French.
M. Silvenoire, who with the slight disadvantage of knowing no tongue but his own was making a study of English social life, found himself at ease this evening for the first time since he had been in London. Encouraged to talk his best, he frankly and amusingly told Mrs. Lessingham of the ideas he had formed regarding conversation in the drawing-rooms of English ladies.
Visitors from Paris were frequent; their presence made a characteristic of the salon. This evening, for instance, honour was paid by the hostess to M. Amedeee Silvenoire, whose experiment in unromantic drama had not long ago gloriously failed at the Odeon; and Madame Jacquelin, the violinist, was looked for. Mrs. Lessingham had not passed a season in London for several years.
At length he was driven to bring forward the one subject on which he desired her views. "Have you, by chance, read my book, Mrs. Elgar?" M. Silvenoire would have understood her smile; the Englishman thought it merely amiable, and prepared for the accustomed compliment. "Yes, I have read it, Mr. Bickerdike. It seemed to me a charmingly written romance."
"I pictured a very youthful man, with a face of effeminate beauty probably a hectic colour in his cheeks." "Such men don't write 'the novel of the season. This gentleman is very shrewd; he gauges the public. Some day, if he sees fit, he will write a brutal book, and it will have merit." Mr. Bickerdike unfortunately did not speak French, so M. Silvenoire was unable to exchange ideas with him.
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