Mr. Foxley stopped a moment to lift his wife's face closer to his own. He kissed it--a long long kiss that entranced them both to the degree of forgetting the story.
"If you would rather not go on--" said Mildred.
"Oh! I must now. Well, we did Paris, and then the other capitals and Nice--Nice was just then coming into vogue, and ran down into Italy--I remember I liked Genoa so much--and then we came back to Paris, for Harfleur--that was the tutor's name, and it doesn't sound like a real one, does it--preferred Paris to any other European town and of course so did I. About this time, his true character began to show itself. He went out frequently without me, smoked quite freely, would order in wine and get me to drink with him, and was very much given to calling me fresh, green, and all that you know. I began to think he was right. I was past twenty-one, and I had never even had a glimpse into the inside of life. Women, now and all that kind of thing--I was positively ignorant of--but to be sure, one quickly learns in Paris."
For one night, Harfleur asked me in his usual sneering tone how I was going to spend my evening.
"I am going out to a charming _soirée_ at the house of Madame de L'Estarre, the most charming woman in Paris," said he.
"'Then I shall accompany you,' I said, fired by his insulting tone. And I went, Mildred. I suppose I was good-looking, eh, my child--and had sufficient air of distinction about me to impress Madame de L'Estarre, for she left the crowd of waxed and perfumed Frenchmen and devoted herself entirely to me. Although she was--beautiful--she was not tall, and I, standing at her side all that evening, never took my eyes off her dazzling face and her white uncovered bosom. In a week, my child, I had learnt to know and love every feature in that dazzling face and began to dream of the day when I should be allowed to kiss that bosom. Yes, I certainly loved her."
"I am sure you loved her, Dacre my darling. And how could she help loving you, dear, in return?"
"Oh that is another thing entirely, quite another thing. After that night, Harfleur showed me more respect than he had done for some time previously and we began to hit it off again better. I went to her _hotel_--her house you know, every day. At first she would always receive me alone, sending anybody away who happened to be there and refusing to admit anybody who came while we were together.--It is difficult, even to my wife, to explain what kind of a woman she was. All that first time, when we would be alone, she would--make love, I suppose it must be called--with her eyes and her hands, and her very skirts and her fan, and the cushion, and the footstool. The room was always beautiful and always dim, and she would greet me with outstretched hands and a shy smile, making room for me beside her on the sofa--she always sat on a sofa. We would talk of nothing at all perhaps but look into each other's eyes, until the force of her look would draw me close, close to her till we were almost in one another's arms, and I could feel her breath coming faster every moment when just as I imagined she would sink upon my shoulder--she would draw herself up with a laugh and push me away, declaring somebody was coming. Then, if nobody came, she would go through the same farce again. This would happen perhaps two or three times a day. In the evening, I was again at her side, night after night regarding her with a devotion that amazed even my friend Harfleur.