If you and he meet, it may make it easier for him to
forgive me the thing I have done.
When Brian and I were having that great summer holiday of ours, the year
before the war--one day we were in a delicious village near a cathedral
town on the Belgian border. A piece of luck had fallen in our way, like
a ripe apple tumbling off a tree. A rich Parisian and his wife came
motoring along, and stopped out of sheer curiosity to look at a picture
Brian was painting, under a white umbrella near the roadside. I was not
with him. I think I must have been in the garden of our quaint old hotel
by the canal side, writing letters--probably one to you; but the couple
took such a fancy to Brian's "impression," that they offered to buy it.
The bargain was struck, there and then. Two days later arrived a
telegram from Paris asking for another picture to "match" the first at
the same price. I advised Brian to choose out two or three sketches for
the people to select from, and carry them to Paris himself, rather than
trust the post. He went; and it was on the one day of his absence that
my romance happened.
Ours was a friendly little hotel, with a darling landlady, who was
almost as much interested in Brian and me as if she'd been our
foster-mother. The morning after Brian left, she came waddling out to
the adorable, earwiggy, rose-covered summer-house that I'd annexed as a
private sitting room. "Mademoiselle," she breathlessly announced, "there
is a young millionaire of a monsieur Anglais or Americain just arrived.
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