Lydia’s mother, whose grandfather had been a serf, was herself hardly more than a peasant, and the professor had married her in accordance with his liberal principles; but she was a pious woman and Lydia had been brought up with strict principles.
It was in vain that she reasoned with herself; it was true that the world was different now and one must move with the times: she could not help it, she had an instinctive horror of becoming a man’s mistress.
And yet.
And yet.
What else was there to look forward to?
Wasn’t she a fool to miss the opportunity that presented itself?
She knew that her prettiness was only the prettiness of youth, in a few years she would be drab and plain; perhaps she would never have another chance.
Why shouldn’t she let herself go?
Only a little relaxation of her self-control and she would love him madly, it would be a relief not to keep that constant rein on her feelings, and he loved her, yes, he loved her, she knew it, the fire of his passion was so hot it made her gasp, in the eagerness of his mobile face she read his fierce desire to possess her; it would be heavenly to be loved by someone she loved to desperation, and if it didn’t last, and of course it couldn’t, she would have had the ecstasy of it, she would have the recollection, and wouldn’t that be worth all the anguish, the bitter anguish she must suffer when he left her?
When all was said and done, if it was intolerable there was always the Seine or the gas oven.
But the curious, the inexplicable, thing was that he didn’t seem to want her to be his mistress.
He used her with a consideration that was full of respect.
He could not have behaved differently if she had been a young girl in the circle of his family acquaintance whose situation and fortune made it reasonable to suppose that their friendship would eventuate in a marriage satisfactory to all parties.
She could not understand it.
She knew that the notion was absurd, but in her bones she had a queer inkling that he wished to marry her.
She was touched and flattered.
If it was true he was one in a thousand, but she almost hoped it wasn’t, for she couldn’t bear that he should suffer the pain that such a wish must necessarily bring him; whatever crazy ideas he harboured, there was his mother in the background, the sensible, practical, middle-class Frenchwoman, who would never let him jeopardize his future and to whom he was devoted as only a Frenchman can be to his mother.
But one evening, after the cinema, when they were walking to the Metro station he said to her:
“There’s no concert next Sunday.
Will you come and have tea at home?
I’ve talked about you so much to my mother that she’d like to make your acquaintance.”
Lydia’s heart stood still.
She realized the situation at once.
Madame Berger was getting anxious about this friendship that her son had formed, and she wanted to see her, the better to put an end to it.
“My poor Robert, I don’t think your mother would like me at all.
I think it’s much wiser we shouldn’t meet.”
“You’re quite wrong.
She has a great sympathy for you.
The poor woman loves me, you know, I’m all she has in the world, and it makes her happy to think that I’ve made friends with a young girl who is well brought up and respectable.”
Lydia smiled.
How little he knew women if he imagined that a loving mother could feel kindly towards a girl that her son had casually picked up at a concert!
But he pressed her so strongly to accept the invitation, which he said he issued on his mother’s behalf, that at last she did.
She thought indeed that it would only make Madame Berger look upon her with increased suspicion if she refused to meet her.
They arranged that he should pick her up at the Porte St. Denis at four on the following Sunday and take her to his mother’s.
He drove up in a car.
“What luxury!” said Lydia, as she stepped in.
“It’s not mine, you know.
I borrowed it from a friend.”
Lydia was nervous of the ordeal before her and not even Robert’s affectionate friendliness sufficed to give her confidence.
They drove to Neuilly.
“We’ll leave the car here,” said Robert, drawing up to the kerb in a quiet street.
“I don’t want to leave it outside our house.
It wouldn’t do for the neighbours to think I had a car and of course I can’t explain that it’s only lent.”
They walked a little.
“Here we are.”
It was a tiny detached villa, rather shabby from want of paint and smaller than, from the way Robert had talked, she expected.
He took her into the drawing-room.
It was a small room crowded with furniture and ornaments, with oil pictures in gold frames on the walls, and opened by an archway on to the dining-room in which the table was set for tea.
Madame Berger put down the novel she was reading and came forward to greet her guest.
Lydia had pictured her as a rather stout, short woman in widow’s weeds, with a mild face and the homely, respectable air of a person who has given up all thought of earthly vanity; she was not at all like that; she was thin, and in her high-heeled shoes as tall as Robert; she was smartly dressed in black flowered silk and she wore a string of false pearls round her neck; her hair, permanently waved, was very dark brown and though she must have been hard on fifty there was not a white streak in it.