She opened her mouth to speak, but then seemed to think better of it, and kept silent.
The music began to play once more.
“Will you dance with me again?” she asked.
“I want to show you that I can dance when I want to.”
Perhaps it was because Simon had left them and she felt less constraint, perhaps it was something in Charley’s manner, maybe his confusion when he had realized that she spoke English, that had made her take notice of him, there was a difference in her attitude.
It had now a kindliness which was unexpected and attractive.
While they danced she talked with something approaching gaiety.
She went back to her childhood and spoke with a sort of grim humour of the squalor in which she and her parents had lived in cheap London lodgings.
And now, taking the trouble to follow Charley’s steps, she danced very well.
They sat down again and Charley glanced at his watch; it was getting on towards midnight.
He was in a quandary.
He had often heard them speak at home of the church music at St. Eustache, and the opportunity of hearing Mass there on Christmas Eve was one that he could not miss.
The thrill of arriving in Paris, his talk with Simon, the new experience of the Serail and the champagne he had drunk, had combined to fill him with a singular exaltation and he had an urgent desire to hear music; it was as strong as his physical desire for the girl he had been dancing with.
It seemed silly to go at this particular juncture and for such a purpose; but there it was, he wanted to, and after all nobody need know.
“Look,” he said, with an engaging smile,
“I’ve got a date.
I must go away now, but I shall be back in an hour.
I shall still find you here, shan’t I?”
“I’m here all night.”
“But you won’t get fixed up with anybody else?”
“Why have you got to go away?”
He smiled a trifle shyly.
“I’m afraid it sounds absurd, but my friend has given me a couple of tickets for the Mass at St. Eustache, and I may never have another opportunity of hearing it.”
“Who are you going with?”
“Nobody.”
“Will you take me?”
“You?
But how could you get away?”
“I can arrange that with Mademoiselle.
Give me a couple of hundred francs and I’ll fix it.”
He gave her a doubtful glance.
With her naked body, her powder-blue turban and trousers, her painted face, she did not look the sort of person to go to church with.
She saw his glance and laughed.
“I’d give anything in the world to go.
Do, do.
I can change in ten minutes.
It would give me so much pleasure.”
“All right.”
He gave her the money and telling him to wait for her in the entrance, she hurried away.
He paid for the wine and after ten minutes, counted on his watch, went out.
As he stepped into the passage a girl came up to him.
“I haven’t kept you waiting, you see.
I’ve explained to Mademoiselle.
Anyway she thinks Russians are mad.”
Until she spoke he had not recognized her.
She wore a brown coat and skirt and a felt hat.
She had taken off her make-up, even the red on her lips, and her eyes under the thin fair line of her shaven eyebrows looked neither so large nor so blue.
In her brown clothes, neat but cheap, she looked nondescript.
She might have been a workgirl such as you see pouring along side streets from the back door of a department store at the luncheon hour.
She was hardly even pretty, but she looked very young; and there was something humble in her bearing that gave Charley a pang.