Read Online The Green Muse by Jessie Prichard Hunter - Free Book Online

second-­best dress, the pink one with the large lavender tulle bow at the neck, the two rows of lavender ruffles at the waist, and the lavender satin ruffles all in a row above the lace ruff at the hem. Maman loves the way I look in pink. I cried as I put the dress on, but I stopped swiftly enough. I have no right to cry.
    As I put on my boots I noted, as I always do, that the heel is not high enough for fashion. I checked the hem and train of the dress very carefully; I do not want to be a soiled dove. I am so dirty already.
    I don’t know how I can ever bear to have Maman look at me again. I will never forget her eyes, which could not find a place to rest because she could not bear to look her daughter in the face.
    I wish I had Yvette’s mirror. I touch the skin of my face, I run my fingers along my familiar cheekbones, the long, uptilted bone of my nose. It is someone else’s face. I cannot be here, in this body, anymore. I look at the sky that cannot save me. I hear birdsong that I usually love, a cow lowing, children’s voices. I feel so far away that it is as though I were dead. I find myself sitting on the bed and do not know how I got there. (I was still dressing a moment ago, looking in my dresser drawer for my buttonhook. Now all eighteen buttons on each boot are neatly latched.) I can only look at the sky. I cannot cry. Inside I am screaming, but I simply sit. My arms and legs are like lead. What have I done? The walls reverberate with my secret. My parents sit in the kitchen and speak in hushed tones about Augustine, and I do not even know who she is. Even Louis is just a shadow now. My name has seeped into the floorboards and even now spreads down the hallway and out the front stairway. When the Augustine who existed half an hour ago in the first faint morning light is gone now, is dead.
    And a young woman I do not know writes in an unfamiliar journal as she sits waiting to hear what sentence is to be passed on her.

 
Chapter 9
    Charles
    W HEN I WALKED out of our apartment that night, I was not looking for her. The streets were wet with rain, and clouds lay like shreds of velvet still beneath swift-­running cumulus. The buildings gleamed black and slick, and rain ran in the gutters.
    I’d had only a small plate of fruit stewed in butter for dinner, but I was not hungry. I had drunk absinthe from a crystal cup. My limbs were heavy, making it difficult even to walk. I was engulfed in a strange melancholy and looked at everything with the same impatient dullness. I wanted some violent escape for my feelings.
    The square in front of the Panthéon was deserted. The narrow, crooked streets leading toward the river were quiet. The Seine flowed slowly, like tar. I stood on the Pont Neuf and watched it. There was nothing for me in its depths.
    When I saw her I was not surprised. She stood, her face turned away from me, looking at some grotesque insignificant stone monster set high in an ancient wall, eaten by time and protecting nothing with its fierce, vacant gaze.
    There was no doubt that it was she. The line of her cape, her neck exposed to the needlelike rain––I spoke. I was defenseless against her.
    â€œYou came to meet me after all,” I said. She didn’t seem surprised.
    â€œNo, I did not,” she said. But she did not move.
    Her eyes were gray. My hands had gotten cold.
    â€œTell me what brings you here.”
    â€œI often walk at night,” she said.
    â€œAlone?”
    â€œI am not afraid.”
    She wore the burgundy cape; it was rich material, opulent with warmth. The air was cold; she had a scarlet scarf wound around her neck. She had antimony at the corners of her eyes.
    â€œThe water is heavy tonight, and slow,” she said finally. “I trust that you are not here with any dramatic intention.”
    I smiled. I was curious.
    â€œYour words this afternoon did not produce quite so intense an effect,” I said lightly.
    â€œYou