Carol wondered, miserably, why they had come. For the first time, she noticed that all the people around them were odd and shabby. The smell of stale winter coats filled the unaired theater; her head began to ache, and Martine’s violin shrilled on her ear like a pennywhistle. At last the music stopped and the lights went on. The concert was over. There was some applause, but people were busy pulling on coats and screaming at one another from aisle to aisle. Martine shook hands with the conductor and, after looking vaguely around the hall, wandered away.
“Is this all?” said Howard. He stood up and stretched. Carol did not reply. She had just seen Felix and Odile together. Odile was speaking rapidly and looked unhappy. She wore the same skirt and pullover Carol had seen all winter, and she was carrying her coat.
“Odile!” Carol called. But Odile waved and threaded her way through the row of seats to the other side of the theater, where she joined some elderly people and a young man. They went off together backstage.
Her family, Carol thought, sickening under the snub. And she didn’t introduce me, or even come over and speak. She was positive now that Odile had invited her only to help fill the hall, or because she had a pair of tickets she didn’t know what to do with.
“Let’s go,” Howard said. Their seats were near the front. By the time they reached the lobby, it was nearly empty. Under the indifferent eyes of the usher, Howard guided Carol into her coat. “They sure didn’t put on much of a show for Martine,” he said.
“No, they didn’t.”
“No flowers,” he said. “It didn’t even have her name on the program. No one would have known.”
It had grown dark, and rain poured from the edge of the roof in an unbroken sheet. “You stay here,” said Howard. “I’ll get a taxi.”
“No,” said Carol. “Stay with me. This won’t last.” She could not bring herself to tell him how hurt and humiliated she was, what a ruin the afternoon had been. Howard led her behind the shelter of a billboard.
“That dress,” he went on. “I thought you’d lent her something.”
“I had. She didn’t wear it. I don’t know why.”
“Ask Odile.”
“I don’t care. I’d rather let it drop.”
He agreed. He felt that Carol had almost knowingly exposed herself to an indignity over the dress, and pride of that nature he understood. To distract her, he spoke of the job waiting for him in Chicago, of his friends, of his brother’s sailboat.
Against a background of rain and Carol’s disappointment, he sounded, without meaning to, faintly homesick. Carol picked up his mood. She looked at the white feather hat the usher had made her remove and said suddenly, “I wish I were home. I wish I were in my own country, with my own friends.”
“You will be,” he said, “in a couple of months.” He hoped she would not begin to cry.
“I’m tired of the way everything is here — old and rotten and falling down.”
“You mean that chunk of ceiling?”
She turned from him, exasperated at his persistently missing the point, and saw Felix not far away. He was leaning against the ticket booth, looking resignedly at the rain. When he noticed Carol looking at him, he said, ignoring Howard, “Odile’s backstage with her family.” He made a face and went on, “No admission for us foreigners.”
Odile’s family did not accept Felix; Carol had barely absorbed this thought, which gave her an unexpected and indignant shock, when she realized what he had meant by “us foreigners.” It was rude of Odile to let her family hurt her friend; at the same time, it was even less kind of them to include Carol in a single category of foreigners. Surely Odile could see the difference between Carol and this pale young man who “did other things.” She felt that she and Felix had been linked together in a disagreeable way, and that she was floating away from everything familiar and safe. Without replying, she bent her head and turned away, politely but unmistakably.
“Funny kid,” Howard remarked as Felix walked slowly out into the rain, his hands in his pockets.
“He’s horrible,” said Carol, so violently that he stared at her. “He’s not funny. He’s a parasite. He lives on Odile. He doesn’t work or anything, he just hangs around and stares at people. Odile says he has no passport. Well, why doesn’t he get one? Any man can work if he wants to. Why are there people like that? All the boys I ever knew at home were well brought up and manly. I never knew anyone like Felix.”
She stopped, breathless, and Howard said, “Well, let Odile worry.”
“Odile!” Carol cried. “Odile must be crazy. What is she thinking of? Her family ought to put a stop to it. The whole thing is terrible. It’s bad for the office. It ought to be stopped. Why, he’ll never marry her! Why should he? He’s only a boy, an orphan. He needs friends, and connections, and somebody his own age. Why should he marry Odile? What does he want with an old maid from an old, broken-down family? He needs a good meal, and — and help.” She stopped, bewildered. She had been about to say “and love.”
Howard, now beyond surprise, felt only a growing wave of annoyance. He did not like hysterical women. His sisters never behaved like that.
“I want to go home,” said Carol, nearly wailing.
He ran off to find a taxi, glad to get away. By “home” he thought she meant the apartment she shared with the two American girls in Passy.
For Carol, the concert was the end, the final clou. She stopped caring about Paris, or Odile, or her feelings for Howard. When Odile returned her green dress, nicely pressed and folded in a cardboard box, she said only, “Just leave it on my desk.” Everyone seemed to think it normal that now her only preoccupation should be the cut of her wedding dress. People began giving parties for her. The wash of attention soothed her fears. She was good-tempered, and did not ask Howard to take her to tiresome places. Once again he felt he had made the right decision, and put her temporary waywardness down to nerves. After a while, Carol began lunching with Odile again, but she did not mention the concert.
As for Felix, Carol now avoided him entirely. Sometimes she waited until Odile had left the office before leaving herself. Again, she braced herself and walked briskly past him, ignoring his “Good evening.” She no longer stopped on the staircase to watch the twilight; her mood was different. She believed that something fortunate had happened to her spirit, and that she had become invulnerable. Soon she was able to walk by Felix without a tremor, and after a while she stopped noticing him at all.
“Have you noticed winter is over?” Odile said. She and Carol had left the dressmaker’s street and turned off on a broad, oblique avenue. “It hasn’t rained for hours. This was the longest winter I remember, although I think one says this every year.”