‘Still herded in camps.’
‘My dear Linda, you could hardly expect us to turn them loose on the countryside with no money – what would be the result? Do use your common sense.’
‘You should mobilize them to fight in the war against Fascism that’s coming any day now.’
‘Talk about what you know and you won’t get so angry. We haven’t enough equipment for our own soldiers in the war against Germany that’s coming – not any day, but after the harvest, probably in August. Now go on telling me about your husbands. It’s so very much more interesting.’
‘Only two. My first was a Conservative, and my second is a Communist.’
‘Just as I guessed, your first is rich, your second is poor. I could see you once had a rich husband, the dressing-case and the fur coat, though it is a hideous colour, and no doubt, as far as one could see, with it bundled over your arm, a hideous shape. Still, vison usually betokens a rich husband somewhere. Then this dreadful linen suit you are wearing has ready-made written all over it.’
‘You are rude, it’s a very pretty suit.’
‘And last year’s. Jackets are getting longer you will find. I’ll get you some clothes – if you were well dressed you would be quite good-looking, though it’s true your eyes are small. Blue, a good colour, but small.’
‘In England,’ said Linda, ‘I am considered a beauty.’
‘Well, you have points.’
So this silly conversation went on and on, but it was only froth on the surface. Linda was feeling, what she had never so far felt for any man, an overwhelming physical attraction. It made her quite giddy, it terrified her. She could see that Fabrice was perfectly certain of the outcome, so was she perfectly certain, and that was what frightened her. How could she, Linda, with the horror and contempt she had always felt for casual affairs, allow herself to be picked up by any stray foreigner, and, having seen him only for an hour, long and long and long to be in bed with him? He was not even good-looking, he was exactly like dozens of other dark men in Homburgs that can be seen in the streets of any French town. But there was something about the way he looked at her which seemed to be depriving her of all balance. She was profoundly shocked, and, at the same time, intensely excited.
After luncheon they strolled out of the restaurant into brilliant sunshine.
‘Come and see my flat,’ said Fabrice.
‘I would rather see Paris,’ said Linda.
‘Do you know Paris well?’
‘I’ve never been here before in my life.’
Fabrice was really startled.
‘Never been here before?’ He could not believe it. ‘What a pleasure for me, to show it all to you. There is so much to show, it will take weeks.’
‘Unfortunately,’ said Linda, ‘I leave for England tomorrow.’
‘Yes, of course. Then we must see it all this afternoon.’
They drove slowly round a few streets and squares, and then went for a stroll in the Bois. Linda could not believe that she had only just arrived there, that this was still the very day which she had seen unfolding itself, so full of promise, through her mist of morning tears.
‘How fortunate you are to live in such a town,’ she said to Fabrice. ‘It would be impossible to be very unhappy here.’
‘Not impossible,’ he said. ‘One’s emotions are intensified in Paris – one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town. The rest of the world seems unbearably cold and bleak to us, hardly worth living in.’ He spoke with great feeling.
After tea, which they had out of doors in the Bois, he drove slowly back into Paris. He stopped the car outside an old house in the rue Bonaparte, and said, again:
‘Come and see my flat.’
‘No, no,’ said Linda. ‘The time has now come for me to point out that I am une femme sérieuse.’
Fabrice gave his great bellow of laughter.
‘Oh,’ he said, shaking helplessly, ‘how funny you are. What a phrase, femme sérieuse, where did you find it? And if so serious, how do you explain the second husband?’
‘Yes, I admit that I did wrong, very wrong indeed, and made a great mistake. But that is no reason for losing control, for sliding down the hill altogether, for being picked up by strange gentlemen at the Gare du Nord and then immediately going with them to see their flat. And please, if you will be so kind as to lend me some money, I want to catch the London train tomorrow morning.’
‘Of course, by all means,’ said Fabrice.
He thrust a roll of banknotes into her hand, and drove her to the Hotel Montalembert. He seemed quite unmoved by her speech, and announced he would come back at eight o’clock to take her out to dinner.
Linda’s bedroom was full of roses, it reminded her of when Moira was born.
‘Really,’ she thought with a giggle, ‘this is a very penny-novelettish seduction, how can I be taken in by it?’
But she was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. She tried to remember how she had felt when she
