‘Don’t worry, it’s nothing, I promise. I feel better already. I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Don’t come in,’ she said, when they arrived at her house. ‘My maid always waits for me – she’s old-fashioned; I’m so lucky. Good night, Hughie.’
When Charles-Edouard got back, not very late, she was in bed, crying dreadfully.
‘Why do you weep?’ he said, with great solicitude.
‘Because you’re in love.’
‘I am in love?’
‘With Juliette.’
‘Why do you say this?’
‘I was at the Russian place. I saw you.’
Charles-Edouard looked very much taken aback. ‘But you never go to night places.’
‘I know. I hate them, but Hughie wanted to –’
‘Ha! You’ve been out with Hughie?’
‘I told you we were all going to dine here, me and Hughie and the Dexters. Well the Dexters went on to a party after dinner so Hughie and I – Oh Charles Edouard, you’re in love with her?’
He raised his hand, shook his head, and replied, ‘Not at all.’
‘Then why were you looking so happy?’
‘Would I look happy if I were in love with Juliette? It would be very inconvenient, after all she is my cousin’s wife. No, I look happy because I am happy – happy in my life and with you, and then I do love to go out with a pretty woman.’
‘Why did you pretend you were going to dine with Tante Edmonde?’
‘But my dear Grace, it was no pretence at all. I did dine there. It so happens that Juliette also was dining with her mother-in-law. Jean has gone to Picardy; she was alone in her flat so she dined downstairs. When I had finished talking with my aunt I took her out for half an hour before bedtime. I didn’t want to come back here and find your dinner still going on.’
‘Oh!’ This sounded so reasonable. ‘Oh dear, I’m sorry to make a scene and I do apologize.’
‘For what? The rights of passion have been proclaimed once and for all in the French Revolution.’
‘The worst part of the whole thing,’ said Grace, tears beginning to well into her eyes again, ‘is that what I minded so terribly was your look of happiness. I am supposed to love you and yet I mind you looking happy. When you were sad, when your grandmother died, I was sorry, of course, but I could easily bear it – now I find that what I can’t bear is for you to look happy. What can it mean, it doesn’t make sense.’
‘That, I’m afraid,’ said Charles-Edouard, ‘is love.’
‘But what can I do! I can’t live with somebody whom I would rather see sad than happy. Perhaps I’d better go back to England?’
‘No. Do stay.’
Grace laughed. ‘You say that as if you were asking me for a week-end.’
‘Do stay, for good.’
‘I can’t bear to make scenes, I’m ashamed of myself, it is dreadful.’
‘You won’t have to very often.’
‘I shall begin to imagine all sorts of things whenever you go out.’
‘That would be the greatest pity – imaginative women are terrible. Now let’s calmly consider what did happen this evening. What did you actually see? Juliette and me, sitting quite properly at a table in a perfectly proper establishment. I was not looking unhappy, but then I have no reason to, I’m not a White Russian violinist. So! That is what you saw. Then your imagination got to work, and what did you imagine? That I had told you a lie, sneaked off to dine in a loving intimacy with Juliette and then taken her to a night club. Knowing me as you do, you might have thought it more probable that, if I were in love with Juliette, I would go straight to bed with her, but no! We choose the night club where we can be seen by all and sundry, and where in fact you see us, staying perhaps an hour, not more. I take her home, but only to the door. My aunt’s concierge, like ours, has to get out of bed to let people in, so there could be no question of me going upstairs with Jean’s wife; the whole of Paris would know it tomorrow if I did. I say good night in the street and come back here – it is still not one o’clock. I don’t think any of this indicates the existence of a great and guilty passion for Juliette. You must be more reasonable, dearest. Shall I give you a piece of advice, quite as useful in love as in warfare? Save your ammunition, and only shoot when you see the whites of their eyes. Now in this particular case I would have you observe that I spent exactly the same sort of evening as you did. We both dined with a few rather dull people, and then went out with the least dull of them for an hour or so before bed.’
‘Hughie isn’t as pretty as Juliette.’
‘Hughie is very handsome, and you know it. But I haven’t come near to seeing the white of his eyes yet. I shan’t shoot this time, and nor must you.’
Grace was completely reassured. She went happily to sleep.
14
A few days later Grace lunched with Carolyn, and the talk was all of a certain guide who took personally conducted tours into the private houses of Paris. Carolyn said that she had followed one of these tours every day that week.
‘I’ve been into such wonderful houses, which I would never have seen otherwise,’ she said. ‘He gets permission to visit anything that is “classé”, and of course that means anything worth seeing. His lectures, too, are good and informative. Yesterday we went to Mansard’s own house in the Marais.’
She described it to Grace. Carolyn was at her best on the subject of old Paris and really knew a great deal about it. She liked the monuments of the town
