Edith Wharton

Madame de Treymes Edith Wharton

John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in thehotel doorway looking out across the Rue de Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileriesgardens. His European visits were infrequent enough to have kept unimpaired the freshness of his eye, and he was always struck anew by the vast and consummately ordered spectacle of Paris: by itslook of having been boldly and deliberately planned as a background for the enjoyment of life, instead of being forced into grudging concessions to the festive instincts, or barricading itselfagainst them in unenlightened ugliness, like his own lamentable New York. But to-day, if the scene had never presented itself more alluringly, in that moist spring bloombetween showers, when the horse-chestnuts dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzysky, and the very dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made visible-to-day for thefirst time the sense of a personal stake in it all, of having to reckon individually with its effectsand influences, kept Durham from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. Paris might still be-tothe unimplicated it doubtless still was-the most beautiful city in the world; but whether it werethe most lovable or the most detestable depended for him, in the last analysis, on the buttoning ofthe white glove over which Fanny de Malrive still lingered. The mere fact of her having forgotten to draw on her gloves as they were descending in thehotel lift from his mother's drawing-room was, in this connection, charged with significance toDurham. She was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind's eye ascompletely equipped, as made up of exquisitely cared for and finely-related details; and that theheat of her parting with his family should have left her unconscious that she was emerginggloveless into Paris, seemed, on the whole, to speak hopefully for Durham's future opinion of thecity. Even now, he could detect a certain confusion, a desire to draw breath and catch up with life, in the way she dawdled over the last buttons in the dimness of the porte-cochere, while herfootman, outside, hung on her retarded signal. When at length they emerged, it was to learn from that functionary that Madame laMarquise's carriage had been obliged to yield its place at the door, but was at the moment in theact of regaining it. Madame de Malrive cut the explanation short. "I shall walk home. Thecarriage this evening at eigh