The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame de Treymes, by Edith Wharton

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Title: Madame de Treymes

Author: Edith Wharton

Posting Date: August 8, 2009 [EBook #4518]
Release Date: October, 2003
First Posted: January 29, 2002

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Charles Aldarondo. HTML version by Al Haines.

MADAME DE TREYMES

BY

EDITH WHARTON

MADAME DE TREYMES

I

John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her
gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de
Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens.

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 its look 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 itself against 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 bloom between showers, when the horse-chestnuts
dome themselves in unreal green against a gauzy sky, and the very
dust of the pavement seems the fragrance of lilac made visible--to-day
for the first time the sense of a personal stake in it all, of having
to reckon individually with its effects and influences, kept Durham
from an unrestrained yielding to the spell. Paris might still be--to
the unimplicated it doubtless still was--the most beautiful city in
the world; but whether it were the most lovable or the most detestable
depended for him, in the last analysis, on the buttoning of the 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 the hotel lift from his mother's drawing-room
was, in this connection, charged with significance to Durham. She
was the kind of woman who always presents herself to the mind's eye
as completely equipped, as made up of