He must have seen her come into the shop, because almost at once he came forward from the counter, leaving the queue of visitors to the care of his sister, and was by her side, humble, polite, anxious to know in what manner he could serve her. There was no trace of familiarity, no look of knowledge in his eyes, and she took care to assure herself of this by staring directly at him. Then deliberately, bringing the children and Miss Clay into the conversation, asking Miss Clay to make her choice of the proofs which were to be sent to England, she kept him there by her side, treating him with condescension, with a sort of hauteur, even finding fault with certain of the proofs, which, so she told him, did not do the children justice, and which she could not possibly send to her husband, the Marquis. The photographer apologised. Most certainly the proofs mentioned did not do the children justice. He would be willing to come again to the hotel and try again, at no extra charge, of course. Perhaps on the terrace or in the gardens the effect would be better.
One or two people turned to look at the Marquise as she stood there. She could feel their eyes upon her, absorbing her beauty, and still in a tone of condescension, coldly, almost curtly, she told the photographer to show her various articles in his shop, which he hastened to do in his anxiety to please.
The other visitors were becoming restive, they shuffled their feet waiting for the sister to serve them, and she, hemmed about with customers, limped wretchedly from one end of the counter to the other, now and again raising her head, peering to see if her brother, who had so suddenly deserted her, would come to the rescue.
At last the Marquise relented. She had had her fill. The delicious furtive sense of excitement that had risen in her since her entrance to the shop died down and was appeased.
'One of these mornings I will let you know,' she said to Monsieur Paul, 'and then you can come out and photograph the children again. Meanwhile, let me pay what I owe. Miss Clay, attend to it, will you?'
And she strolled from the shop, not bidding him good-morning, putting out her hands to the two children.
She did not change for dejeuner. She wore the same enchanting frock, and the hotel terrace, more crowded than ever because of the many visitors who had come on an excursion, seemed to her to buzz and hum with a murmur of conversation, directed at her and her beauty, and at the effect she made, sitting there at the table in the corner. The maitre d'hotel, the waiters, even the manager himself, were drawn towards her, obsequious, smiling, and she could hear her name pass from one to the other.
All things combined to her triumph; the proximity of people, the smell of food and wine and cigarettes, the scent of the gaudy flowers in their tubs, the feel of the hot sun beating down, the close sound of the splashing sea. When she rose at last with the children and went upstairs, she had a sense of happiness that she felt must only come to a prima donna after the clamour of long applause.
The children, with Miss Clay, went to their rooms to rest; and swiftly, hurriedly, the Marquise changed her frock and her shoes and tip-toed down the stairs and out of the hotel, across the burning sands to the path and the bracken headland.
He was waiting for her, as she expected, and neither of them made any reference to her visit in the morning, or to what brought her there on the cliff this afternoon. They made at once for the little clearing by the cliff's edge and sat down of one accord, and the Marquise, in a tone of banter, described the crowd at lunch, and the fearful bustle and fatigue of the terrace with so many people, and how delicious it was to get away from them all to the fresh clean air of the headland, above the sea.
He agreed with her humbly, watching her as she spoke of such mundane matters as though the wit of the world flowed in her speech, and then, exactly as on the previous day, he begged to take a few photographs of her, and she consented, and presently she lay back in the bracken and closed her eyes.
There was no sense of time to the long, languorous afternoon. Just as before the dragon-flies winged about her in the bracken, and the sun beat down upon her body, and with her sense of deep enjoyment at all that happened went the curiously satisfying knowledge that what she did was without emotion of any sort. Her mind and her affections were quite untouched. She might almost have been relaxing in a beauty parlour, back in Paris, having the first tell-tale lines smoothed from her face and her hair shampooed, although these things brought only a lazy contentment and no pleasure.
Once again he departed, leaving her without a word, tactful and discreet, so that she could arrange herself in privacy. And once again, when she judged him out of sight, she rose to her feet and began the long walk back to the hotel.
Her good luck held and the weather did not break. Every afternoon, as soon as dejeuner was over and the children had gone to rest, the Marquise went for her promenade, returning about half-past four, in time for tea. Miss Clay, at first exclaiming at her energy, came to accept the walk as a matter of routine. If the Marquise chose to walk in the heat of the day, it was her own affair; certainly it seemed to do her good. She was more human towards her, Miss Clay, and less nagging to the children. The constant headaches and attacks of migraine were forgotten, and it seemed that the Marquise was really enjoying this simple seaside holiday alone with Miss Clay andthe two little girls.
When a fortnight had passed, the Marquise discovered that the first delight and bliss of her experience was slowly fading. It was not that Monsieur Paul failed her in any way, but that she herself was becoming used to the daily ritual. Like an inoculation that 'took' at the first with very great success, on constant repetition the effect lessened, dulled, and the Marquise found that to recapture her enjoyment she was obliged to treat the photographer no longer as a lay-figure, or as she would a coiffeur who had set her hair, but as a person whose feelings she could wound. She would find fault with his appearance, complain that he wore his hair too long, that his clothes were cheap, ill-cut, or even that he ran his little shop in the town with inefficiency, that the material and paper he used for his prints were shoddy.
She would watch his face when she told him this, and she would see anxiety and pain come into his large eyes, pallor to his skin, a look of dejection fall upon his whole person as he realised how unworthy he was of her, how inferior in every way, and only when she saw him thus did the original excitement kindle in her again.
Deliberately she began to cut down the hours of the afternoon. She would arrive late at the rendezvous in the bracken and find him waiting for her with that same look of anxiety on his face, and if her mood was not sufficiently ripe for what should happen she would get through the business quickly, with an ill grace, and then dispatch him hastily on his return journey, picturing him limping back, tired and unhappy, to the shop in the little town.
She permitted him to take photographs of her still. This was all part of the experience, and she knew that it troubled him to do this, to see her to perfection, so she delighted in taking advantage of it, and would sometimes tell him to come to the hotel during the morning, and then she would pose in the grounds, exquisitely dressed, the children beside her, Miss Clay an admiring witness, the visitors watching from their rooms or from the terrace.
The contrast of these momings, when as an employee he limped back and forth at her bidding, moving the tripod first here, first there, while she gave him orders, with the sudden intimacy of the afternoons in the bracken under the hot sun, proved, during the third week, to be her only stimulation.
Finally, a day breaking when quite a cold breeze blew in from the sea, and she did not go to the rendezvous as usual but rested on her balcony reading a novel, the change in the routine came as a real relief.
The following day was fine and she decided to go to the headland, and for the first time since they had encountered one another in the cool dark cellar below the shop he upbraided her, his voice sharp with anxiety.
'I waited for you all yesterday afternoon,' he said. 'What happened?'
She stared at him in astonishment.
'It was an unpleasant day,' she replied. 'I preferred to read on my balcony in the hotel.'
'I was afraid you might have been taken ill,' he went on. 'I very nearly called at the hotel to enquire for you. I hardly slept last night, I was so upset.'
He followed her to the hiding-place in the bracken, his eyes still anxious, lines of worry on his brow, and though in a sense it was a stimulation to the Marquise to witness his distress, at the same time it irritated her that he should so forget himself to find fault in her conduct. It was as though her coiffeur in Paris, or her masseur, expressed anger when she broke an appointment fixed for a certain day.
'If you think I feel myself bound to come here every afternoon you are very much mistaken,' she said. 'I have plenty of other things to do.'
At once he apologised, he was abject. He begged her to forgive him.
'You cannot understand what this means to me,' he said. 'Since I have known you, everything in my life is changed. I live only for these afternoons.'
His subjection pleased her, whipping her to a renewal of interest, and pity came to her too, as he lay by her
