Always the industrious struggler for what he wanted, he decided upon immediate and intensive action.
Conscious that inspiration for Aileen depended upon his own smart appearance, he took the utmost pains to look his best.
He smiled as he contrasted himself with the figure he had cut in New York six months before.
Rosalie Harrigan, that wretched room, his disappointing efforts to get a job!
His apartment in the Bois was but a few moments’ walk from the Ritz, and he stepped forth this morning with the air of a Parisian favorite.
He thought of the various dressmakers, hairdressers, milliners, he would enlist in the making-over of Aileen.
Around the corner was Claudel Richard.
He would take her to Richard, and persuade him to impress upon her that if she would take off twenty pounds he would design costumes for her that would arrest attention and that she should be among the first to wear.
Then there was Kraussmeier, in the Boulevard Haussmann.
His footwear was rumored to excel that of all bootmakers.
Tollifer had satisfied himself as to that.
In the Rue de la Paix, what ornaments, perfumes, jewels!
In the Rue Dupont, what salon de beaute with Sarah Schimmel’s as the favored establishment in this particular field.
Aileen should learn of her.
At Natasha Lubovsky’s balcony restaurant overlooking the park across from Notre Dame, lingering over iced coffee and eggs Sudanoff, he lectured Aileen on current modes and tastes.
Had she heard that Teresa Bianca, the Spanish dancing sensation, was wearing Kraussmeier slippers?
And Francesca, the youngest daughter of the Duke of Toller, was one of his patronesses.
And had she heard of the marvels of beautifying accomplished by Sarah Schimmel?
He recited a dozen instances.
Followed a visit to Richard’s, then to Kraussmeier’s, and certain Luti, newly favored vendor of perfumes, and the afternoon ended with tea at Germay’s.
And at nine in the evening, at the Cafe de Paris, there was a dinner, at which appeared Rhoda Thayer, of American light-opera fame, and her summer companion, the Brazilian Mello Barrios, under-secretary of the Brazilian Embassy. Also a guest was a certain Maria Rezstadt, of Czech and Hungarian extraction.
On one of his earlier visits to Paris, Tollifer had met her as the wife of one of the Austria’s secret military representatives in France.
Lunching in Marguery’s one day recently, he had met her again, in company with Santos Castro, a baritone of the French opera, who was singing opposite the new American opera star, Mary Garden.
He learned her husband had died, and noted she seemed a little bored with Castro.
If Tollifer were free, she would be glad to see him again.
And since her mood as well as her natural intelligence and suave maturity seemed better suited to Aileen than some of the younger women he knew, Tollifer had immediately planned to introduce her to Aileen.
And, on presentation, Aileen was strongly impressed by her.
She was a woman of arresting appearance: tall, with smooth black hair and strange gray eyes, and this evening dressed in what appeared to be a single length of ruby velvet, draped seductively around her.
In sharp contrast to Aileen, she wore no jewels, and her hair was drawn back smoothly from her face.
Her attitude toward Castro suggested that he meant little to her, except maybe the publicity which contact with him might bring her.
Turning to Aileen and Tollifer, she proceeded to relate that only recently she and Castro had made a tour of the Balkans, an admission—and coming so soon after Tollifer’s explanation to Aileen that the two were merely good friends—which somewhat startled Aileen, since always, and regardless of her personal and private transgressions, she was a little overawed by convention.
Yet this woman •was so suave and assured as practically to laugh at the demands of organized society.
Aileen was fascinated.
“You see, in the East,” said Madame Rezstadt, commenting on her trip, “the women are slaves.
Truly, only the gypsies appear to be free, and they, of course, have no position.
The wives of most of the officials and men of title are really slaves, living in fear of their husbands.”
Aileen smiled wanly at this.
“That is probably not true of the East alone,” she said.
Madame Rezstadt smiled wisely.
“No,” she said, “not exactly.
We have slaves here, too.
In Ahmayreecah, too, yaays?”
She showed her even white teeth.
Aileen laughed, thinking of her emotional enslavement to Cowperwood.
How was it that a woman like this could be so wholly emancipated, caring apparently for no man, at least not deeply or torturingly, whereas she . . . At once she wished that she might know her better, perhaps by contact gather some of her emotional calm and social indifference.
Curiously enough, Madame Rezstadt appeared to show more than a casual interest in her.
She asked Aileen about her life in America. How long was she to be in Paris? Where was she staying? She suggested they have lunch together on the following day, to which Aileen agreed with alacrity.
At the same time, her head was swimming with all of the practical business of the afternoon, and Tollifer’s part in it.
For most certainly, and by the pleasant indirection of shopping, there had been conveyed to her a sense of her personal lacks, which, at the same time, she had been convinced could be remedied. There was to be a doctor, a masseuse, a diet, and a new method of facial massage.
She was to be changed, and by Tollifer.