Chapter 1 It was the first day warm enough to eat outdoors in the Bois de Boulogne, while chestnut blossoms slanted down across the tables and dropped impudently into the butter and the wine. Julia Ross ate a few with her bread and listened to the big goldfish rippling in the pool and the sparrows whirring about an abandoned table. You could see everybody again — the waiters with their professional faces, the watchful Frenchwomen all heels and eyes, Phil Hoffman opposite her with his heart balanced on his fork, and the extraordinarily handsome man just coming out on the terrace.
— the purple noon's transparent might.
The breath of the moist air is light
Around each unexpanded bud —
Julia trembled discreetly; she controlled herself; she didn't spring up and call, "Yi-yi-yi-yi! Isn't this grand?" and push the ma î tre d'h ô tel into the lily pond. She sat there, a well-behaved woman of twenty-one, and discreetly trembled.
Phil was rising, napkin in hand. "Hi there, Dick!"
"Hi, Phil!"
It was the handsome man; Phil took a few steps forward and they talked apart from the table.
" — seen Carter and Kitty in Spain — "
" — poured on to the Bremen — "
" — so I was going to — "
The man went on, following the head waiter, and Phil sat down.
"Who is that?" she demanded.
"A friend of mine — Dick Ragland."
"He's without doubt the handsomest man I ever saw in my life."
"Yes, he's handsome," he agreed without enthusiasm.
"Handsome! He's an archangel, he's a mountain lion, he's something to eat. Just why didn't you introduce him?"
"Because he's got the worst reputation of any American in Paris."
"Nonsense; he must be maligned. It's all a dirty frame-up — a lot of jealous husbands whose wives got one look at him. Why, that man's never done anything in his life except lead cavalry charges and save children from drowning."
"The fact remains he's not received anywhere — not for one reason but for a thousand."
"What reasons?"
"Everything. Drink, women, jails, scandals, killed somebody with an automobile, lazy, worthless — "
"I don't believe a word of it," said Julia firmly. "I bet he's tremendously attractive. And you spoke to him as if you thought so too."
"Yes," he said reluctantly, "like so many alcholics, he has a certain charm. If he'd only make his messes off by himself somewhere — except right in people's laps. Just when somebody's taken him up and is making a big fuss over him, he pours the soup down his hostess' back, kisses the serving maid and passes out in the dog kennel. But he's done it too often. He's run through about everybody, until there's no one left."
"There's me," said Julia.
There was Julia, who was a little too good for anybody and sometimes regretted that she had been quite so well endowed. Anything added to beauty has to be paid for — that is to say, the qualities that pass as substitutes can be liabilities when added to beauty itself. Julia's brilliant hazel glance was enough, without the questioning light of intelligence that flickered in it; her irrepressible sense of the ridiculous detracted from the gentle relief of her mouth, and the loveliness of her figure might have been more obvious if she had slouched and postured rather than sat and stood very straight, after the discipline of a strict father.
Equally perfect young men had several times appeared bearing gifts, but generally with the air of being
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