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“I don’t know. One doesn’t know those things until after one has done them. Then one is enlightened.”

“And you mean that you have never been enlightened? You make yourself out very good.”

“That is better than making one’s self out bad, as you do.”

The young girl glanced at me a moment, and then, with her charming smile, “That’s one of the consequences of a false position.”

“Is your position false?” I inquired, smiling too at this large formula.

“Distinctly so.”

“In what way?”

“Oh, in every way. For instance, I have to pretend to be a jeune fille. I am not a jeune fille; no American girl is a jeune fille; an American girl is an intelligent, responsible creature. I have to pretend to be very innocent, but I am not very innocent.”

“You don’t pretend to be very innocent; you pretend to be–what shall I call it?–very wise.”

“That’s no pretence. I am wise.”

“You are not an American girl,” I ventured to observe.

My companion almost stopped, looking at me; there was a little flush in her cheek. “Voila!” she said. “There’s my false position. I want to be an American girl, and I’m not.”

“Do you want me to tell you?” I went on. “An American girl wouldn’t talk as you are talking now.”

“Please tell me,” said Aurora Church, with expressive eagerness. “How would she talk?”

“I can’t tell you all the things an American girl would say, but I think I can tell you the things she wouldn’t say. She wouldn’t reason out her conduct, as you seem to me to do.”

Aurora gave me the most flattering attention. “I see. She would be simpler. To do very simple things that are not at all simple–that is the American girl!”

I permitted myself a small explosion of hilarity. “I don’t know whether you are a French girl, or what you are,” I said, “but you are very witty.”

“Ah, you mean that I strike false notes!” cried Aurora Church, sadly. “That’s just what I want to avoid. I wish you would always tell me.”

The conversational union between Miss Ruck and her neighbour, in front of us, had evidently not become a close one. The young lady suddenly turned round to us with a question: “Don’t you want some ice-cream?”

“SHE doesn’t strike false notes,” I murmured.

There was a kind of pavilion or kiosk, which served as a cafe, and at which the delicacies procurable at such an establishment were dispensed. Miss Ruck pointed to the little green tables and chairs which were set out on the gravel; M. Pigeonneau, fluttering with a sense of dissipation, seconded the proposal, and we presently sat down and gave our order to a nimble attendant. I managed again to place myself next to Aurora Church; our companions were on the other side of the table.

My neighbour was delighted with our situation. “This is best of all,” she said. “I never believed I should come to a cafe with two strange men! Now, you can’t persuade me this isn’t wrong.”

“To make it wrong we ought to see your mother coming down that path.”

“Ah, my mother makes everything wrong,” said the young girl, attacking with a little spoon in the shape of a spade the apex of a pink ice. And then she returned to her idea of a moment before: “You must promise to tell me–to warn me in some way–whenever I strike a false note. You must give a little cough, like that–ahem!”

“You will keep me very busy, and people will think I am in a consumption.”

“Voyons,” she continued, “why have you never talked to me more? Is that a false note? Why haven’t you been ‘attentive?’ That’s what American girls call it; that’s what Miss Ruck calls it.”

I assured myself that our companions were out of earshot, and that Miss Ruck was much occupied with a large vanilla cream. “Because you are always entwined with that young lady. There is no getting near you.”