‘You mean: more beautiful?’
That he could read her thoughts made her laugh, and also that he did not make the slightest effort to be gallant. She suggested that he might be interested in seeing some of her photographs from those days, and as she reached for one of the albums lying on a console, it occurred to her that she might as well give him leave to call her by her first name, but in the next instant forgot her intention.
He leafed through the album, which contained many fine portraits of her: with a ribbon in her hair, wearing a pearl necklace, and several in a low-necked gown.
‘Well? What do you think?’ she asked, in response to his silence.
‘Very pretty,’ he said indifferently. ‘But that smile. . so coquettish, so sweet. . a pretentious kind of sweetness. A bit off-putting. Did you always look like that, or were you doing it for the photograph?’
She was piqued.
‘Goodness me, I didn’t know you could be so harsh!’ she said accusingly.
‘Was I harsh? If so, I beg your pardon. They are portraits of you, after all. I was confused. It’s hard for me to recognise you in them. But to be quite honest, I would have been put off if I had seen you looking like that. Beautiful, but off-putting. You look thinner now, and rather frail, but there is something very appealing about your expression, whereas the portraits are just coquettish poses. I prefer you as you are now.’
He closed the album and laid it aside.
‘And you?’ he resumed. ‘Would you rather be the way you were then? Do you miss your old life?’
‘Oh no,’ she sighed. ‘I wasn’t happy then, either.’
‘But from now on you will do your best to be happy, won’t you?’
She laughed softly and shrugged her shoulders.
‘Happiness can’t be forced,’ she murmured dreamily, in English.
‘I didn’t know you spoke English!’ he exclaimed.
‘Me?’ she responded in French, waking from her dream.
‘Yes, you!’
‘Me? Speaking English?’
‘Not now; a moment ago.’
‘Was I speaking English? I didn’t realise—’
‘Why did you never speak English to me before?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Yes you do.’
‘No, truly, I don’t.’
‘Of course you know. Come now, tell me why.’
She gave a light, gay laugh.
‘Because of the way you speak French! Your accent is so charming.’
‘So you have been laughing at me behind my back all this time?’
‘No, truly I have not!’
‘Then which language shall we speak from now on? English or French?’
‘French, or you’ll only think I was laughing anyway.’
‘There’s no logic at all in what you’re saying.’
‘I dare say, but I want to go on speaking French.’
‘See? You aren’t as weak as you thought. You’re getting braver already.’
‘Am I?’
‘This is the first time I’ve heard you say “I want”. It’s a good start. Mark my words: first you exercise your will over some small matter, and soon it will become firmer. Once it’s firm and strong, you’ll become brave. Promise me you’ll try to cultivate that small will of yours, think of it as a hothouse seedling that needs a lot of care.’
She continued to smile sweetly.
‘I could become very wilful under your influence.’
‘Well, I hope not. But I’d be delighted if you became a little braver under my influence.’
‘I shall do my best.’
‘And I shall keep you to your word. Now I must be off. It is nearly eleven.’
She wanted to exclaim ‘What, already?’, but checked the impulse.
‘Now tell me honestly, don’t you think you are far better off going to bed early and getting a good night’s sleep instead of staying up until six in the morning and dancing with strange men and associating with an even stranger assortment of ladies?’
‘You are absolutely right. I am very grateful to you.’
‘And so am I to you, for the coin you have given me.’
She sensed that his gratitude extended further than the coin.
‘And now I must take my leave. Goodnight, Eline.’
She was moved to hear him call her by her first name; it struck a new note of familiarity and warmth.
‘Goodnight, Lawrence,’ she whispered.
She extended her slender hand. He held it a moment, gazing into her eyes, then let go.
‘Adieu!’ he said with a final cordial nod, and left.
She remained standing a while, sunk in thought, then ordered the servant to turn off the light in the reception room, and retired to her bedroom. She took the string of coins from her hair and laid it on her dressing table. The shimmering draperies of her oriental costume were spread out on a chair, with her Moorish mules on the floor beside it.
While she was getting dressed for bed she could hear his voice speaking in that light accent of his. She tidied away her jewellery with deliberation. Her eye fell on her watch, and from there on the black locket attached to the chain. She opened the locket and gazed at it for a long moment, moist-eyed.
Then she pressed a soft kiss on the likeness it contained, as though she were kissing someone who had just died. She had a momentary impulse to detach the locket from the chain and put it away in one of the little drawers of her jewellery box, where she kept various trinkets that she no longer wore. But she did not act on it.
She climbed into bed. She did not sleep. Nor did she take any drops. At half-past five she heard Uncle Daniel and Eliza return home, sighing with exhaustion. But her wakeful hours had been undisturbed by grim thoughts of any kind; indeed, she felt bathed in a calm, rosy glow of repose.
Towards morning she dozed off, and when she awoke she felt less lethargic than usual.
. .
Eline did not see Eliza again until lunch the following day. Uncle Daniel had already left on one of his numerous missions, the nature of which was never fully disclosed, so that his occupation remained a mystery to Eline. She asked Eliza whether she had amused herself at the ball.
‘Oh, yes, well enough,’ Eliza responded genially. ‘Rather a brouhaha. Perhaps it was just as well that you didn’t go. You would have been a nervous wreck. Le cher poète était désolé. Did St Clare stay long?’
‘Until eleven.’
‘Ah well, personally I didn’t mind about him advising you to stay in. But Daniel thought it a bit strange that you were so easily persuaded. He’s got over it now, though! You are as free as you like as far as we’re concerned, you know that.’
Eline said nothing.
‘But you have to admit,’ Eliza continued with a chuckle, ‘that it was a bit odd. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘Well, what does it make you think?’ asked Eline warily.
‘My dear girl, that is private. I am not going to tell you. You know I don’t go in for much thinking, but right now I do have some ideas. Don’t be alarmed: I am all in favour of it, if what I suspect is true.’
Eline sensed that this was an allusion to something she was barely conscious of herself.
She kept silent, whereupon Eliza, still fatigued from the ball, settled herself on a couch with a book and soon dozed off. Eline went to the balcony and sat down to think. She had thought little during the last few days, which had passed in a haze of contented submission, but now Eliza’s words had impinged on her consciousness. A bit odd. . it made you think. . True, that St Clare should have been so bold as to ask her not to go to the ball was slightly odd, to say the least, and it was no less odd of her to have consented! What this made her think of she dared not formulate in her mind, although the temptation to do so was almost irresistible. But she knew that nothing could come of it, that it could never be. . Oh, why had she not met him sooner? How cruel fate was!