I recognize her voice at the other end of the wire.
"Marguerite! C'est Sapho qui parle."
"Oh, ma chere! What happiness. Where are you? I must see you at once! Will you come here?"
The French enthusiasm, the voice vibrating with unmistakable delight, are wine to me. In spite of her insistence that we must meet at once- "immediatement! immediatement!" she repeats-we finally agree to see each other that evening at a friend's studio.
I go again into the street with a little of the greyness lifted. How mysteriously heartening is pleasure, and the thought of pleasure.
Night, and the indestructible magic of passion in the veins and the mist of a spring evening dimming the lights that are softer than most city lights. The ancient buildings have become more characterful. They are not splendid and blatant like New York's concrete monsters.
I run up the old staircase to the studio. It is early and the hostess is not yet there, but I enter. In Montreal we leave our studios unlocked, or the key in some accessible corner. The familiar studio, full of the pictures I had watched being painted, is another pleasure. Someone had freed incense or sandalwood perfume in the room.
I am stretched on a sofa with a cigarette, trying not to think of Louise, whom I had loved more than once in this place, when someone knocks at the door. I open it and find the woman from the adjoining studio standing there, like a Baccante, with a decanter of red wine in her left hand. She wears a transparent kimono and rather disarranged hair. I am glad enough to see her.
We had been friends once upon a time.
"I saw you come in," she explained, putting the decanter down on a table. I motion towards it:
"What's that for?"
"Oh! You've forgotten since you lived in that desert across the border!"
It was plain to me that she had not "forgotten." She seemed to have been practicing well that very day. She poured wine for both of us, then reclining so that her kimono became very vague about the shoulder, began immediately to tell me, French fashion, about her lover-the latest.
In my last few years in Montreal, everyone seemed to come to me with confessions. I became a sort of repository for the troubles of the artistic tribe, and at one time had locked in my memory the intimate secrets and misdeeds of about one-half of Montreal's quartier-latin. They came to me with everything from confessions of rape-even murder, once-to the tiniest sins of the spirit. Why they trusted me, I do not know. I felt quite at home when Davila, nicknamed "Devil," called "Dev" for handiness, immediately unfolded an intrigue for me.
She departed when Regina, mistress of the studio, arrived at eight o'clock.
Regina greeted me with a maidenly kiss on the cheek. Regina is an artist, two or three years my senior, although she appears to be younger. She has not the brains nor the curiosity about life ever to be a great painter. Her claims to the title of artist lie chiefly in a vivid, almost virile color sense, and a careful technique. Her claims to my admiration are far more numerous. Her type is oriental; coloring richly dark; magnificent, slow-burning eyes; features that would be heavy but for the life that shines through, as though they were transparent; figure a little too full, but redeemed by the firmness of unused youth; hard, not too large breasts; and beautiful hands.
I draw her to my side on the couch and begin talking about her pictures.
There is a lot to criticize in the latest.
"It is difficult to realize, looking at you," I tell her, "but love, even passion, is lacking in your work. How do you keep it out?"
"I don't know. I have not ever really loved."
I had guessed that much, but I merely say:
"Why don't you?"
"I have not yet found anyone I want to fall in love with."
That is an attitude I am not in sympathy with.
I rarely await Fate's sweet pleasure. So I tell her:
"Love is worth the loving regardless of that. The perfection is in the artist and the art itself, not in the instrument, is it not so?"
She seemed troubled about it. "Men do not inspire me," hesitatingly, "My lips are loath to meet theirs as my brush is to paint them. No. They do not inspire me in the least."
Woman always waits to be inspired! Well-Marguerite is not due for an hour and this little creature is very seductive. I take both her hands and kiss them. I love beautiful hands.
"Perhaps I can inspire you."
She smiles uncertainly, but I draw her towards me and kiss her mouth; her eyes, and throat; then the mouth again. It grows warm, and the little nipples of her breasts harden under my fingers. I have never caressed such a sensitive skin. It burns and trembles wherever it is touched, and I am surprised that so responsive a body should be innocent of love. She does not seem to wish that it should remain innocent, tempting me with the most beautiful abandon, that I would willingly meet with all my passion; but Fate, unusually malicious, intervenes with footsteps on the stairs. It is quite certain they belong to Marguerite, whom I had forgotten. Regina hears them, too, and hot, restraining hands creep and cling round me. I cannot help feeling sorry for her. A final kiss that neither of us wants to end, and she lets me go.
Pulling a screen around the couch to give Regina time to arrange her things-for something besides, Marguerite's eyes harbor a dash of green! — I reach the door just as the knock comes. Nothing can restrain the exuberance of Marguerite's greeting. For Regina's sake, I am glad of the screen.
Marguerite is pale, more lithe, more tiger-like, than when I last saw her, and even then I would run my hands over her body and ask how she managed to hide the stripes! The yellow-green eyes are pure tiger. Her clothes are chosen with the absolute art that only the French seem to possess.
Regina, looking self-possessed enough, even to my eye, comes from behind the screen and takes Marguerite's wraps. Before we are seated others arrive.
Conversation and wine carry the evening swiftly to midnight. Marguerite, passion apparently making her impatient, whispers to me several times to leave and go home with her. I am eager enough to go, but the moods of her impatience interest me to watch. It is not kind, perhaps, but a dash of pain is good seasoning for pleasure-makes it more vital, aggressive.
A little later I get Regina into a corner, tell her I am about to leave, and ask if I may see her tomorrow, before I depart for New York. She consents, of course, her large eyes kissing me; then says impulsively:
"I wish you could stay longer. I would love to do a head of you with just the expression you had when-we were together on the couch."
"So! I did inspire you?" I kiss the beautiful hand, hoping Marguerite does not see, and leave her.
Marguerite and I go decorously enough downstairs, but outside the air, the everlasting moon, the desertedness of the streets, are too much for us. We embrace the minute the policeman at the corner turns his back.
Marguerite and I are perfectly in accord about one important detail of love- we believe that the surroundings should harmonize with the passion; so she, quite naturally, immediately dims the lights when we enter her home, puts glowing charcoal in the incense burner, and pours liqueur- appropriately perverse little glasses; then, forgetting everything, apparently, but her need of love, sinks down beside me, where I recline on the rug and receives my kisses on her flung-back throat and face.
The foolish clothes that interrupt my lips! I unfasten them and slip them off; my own as well. The couch is more comfortable than the rug. I raise her and we stand against each other, embrace, kiss-the perfect kiss of completely meeting bodies. It creates desire too keen to be borne. Perspiration dampens her skin and mine. The perfume she has put on her body, not sweet but something insidiously acrid of eastern origin, fills my head with a hot mist.