“I will not deceive you with false praise, however. You are a good artist, but you will never be great. For that matter, neither will I. Few of us are touched by genius.”
“Not everyone can be Shakespeare,” she said, remembering her conversation with Sam.
“You English and your Shakespeare,” he said, and wrinkled his nose disdainfully. “You may not be a great artist, Mademoiselle Parr, but you are capable of creating imaginative and highly decorative work. You might wish to consider turning to commercial art—posters and book jackets, for instance. You ought to consider it.”
“Can one make a decent living with such work?” she asked, cringing at the vulgarity of her question. All the same, she had to know. Her future depended on it.
“Certainly you can. Would you like me to make some inquiries?”
She hated to ask him for anything, but it would be foolish to turn down his offer. “Yes, please. And thank you.”
“It is nothing. Good luck, Mademoiselle Parr.”
The instant he left the room, étienne and Mathilde were at her side, their expressions an almost comical mixture of curiosity and fear.
“What did he say?”
“I hope he wasn’t unkind . . .”
“He was fine. I am . . . I’ll be fine. I think I know what to do next.”
It wasn’t what she had expected, or hoped for, but she wasn’t going to turn up her nose at the ma?tre’s suggestion. He had shown her a way forward, a way to realize her dreams. A way to live independently, without recourse to her family’s money.
But first, she knew, she had to see Sam.
“I must go,” she told her friends. “There’s someone I must see. Thank you for everything.” She kissed them good-bye, and then ran from the Salon without a backward glance.
She had to tell him. She had to apologize and let Sam know that she had found her way—and so could he.
SHE HAD SENT Vincent home earlier, but rather than take the Métro now, she jumped in a waiting taxi and asked the driver to take her to the H?tel de Lisbonne. There was a good chance that Sam would still be home at that time of day, and if he weren’t she would simply take another taxi to his office.
No one challenged her as she walked through the hotel’s modest lobby and started up the stairs, her heart hammering in her chest, her hands clammy with nerves. She knocked on Sam’s door, lightly at first, and then harder when there was no reply.
“It’s Ellie. Please open the door if you’re there. I have to talk to you.”
A door opened down the hall, and a man poked his head out just far enough to stare at her. She recognized him—he was one of the other deskmen at the newspaper, though she couldn’t recall his name.
“Hello. I’m sorry for the noise,” she said.
“You looking for Howard?”
“Yes. I had hoped—”
“He’s gone. Moved out this morning.”
Gone. Moved out.
“But he wasn’t supposed to leave until next week,” she said, her hand clutching at the door frame.
“Left this morning. Sorry about that.”
She walked home in a daze, not even noticing when the sky grew dark and it began to rain. She was soaked through by the time she stumbled up the front steps of her aunt’s house, and though she tried to be quiet as she crept along the front hall and toward the stairs it was no use, for her aunt burst out of the petit salon when Helena was only on the second step.
“Helena, my dear, where have you been? And why were you walking in the rain?”
She allowed Agnes to pull her into the petit salon, where she was wrapped in warm towels and given a cup of tea and allowed to collect herself. She had just swallowed the last of the tea when she noticed the newspaper clipping on the table beside her.
“It was in the paper today,” Agnes said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”
The Tribune’s Samuel Taylor Howard is departing these shores for the United States. Mr. Howard is leaving his chosen profession behind, much to the disappointment of his fellows here in Paris, with the intention of joining his father, Andrew Clement Howard III, in the management of their family’s business concerns in America and abroad. He is sailing from Le Havre on the SS Paris and upon arrival in New York City is expected to immediately take up his position with the Howard Steel Company.
She let go of the clipping and watched it flutter to the floor. “I knew. He told me. But he wasn’t meant to leave until next week. I thought . . . I thought I’d have a chance to say good-bye.”
Tears rose in her eyes again, and with them came quiet, anguished sobs that left her drained and spent and nearly without hope. Agnes hugged her close and let her weep, and it was a long while before she was able to speak again.
“I was so unkind to him. I said . . . oh, I said such awful things, and now he’s gone, and I think it might be my fault . . .”
“How so?” her aunt asked.
“He was upset with me, because he thought I was giving up on my dream of becoming an artist, and of course he was right. But I lashed out at him, and I said some very cruel things. I told him . . . oh, Auntie A. I told him he should go back to America. That he belonged there.”