She’ll adore you.”
Lydia laughed.
“Don’t be so silly.
She detested me.”
“No, no, you’re wrong.
I promise you.
I know her, I saw at once that she took to you.”
Lydia shrugged her shoulders, but did not answer.
When they parted they arranged to go to the cinema on the following Tuesday.
She agreed to his plan, but she was pretty sure that his mother would put a stop to it.
He knew her address now.
“If anything should happen to prevent you, you’ll send me a petit bleu?”
“Nothing will happen to prevent me,” he said fondly.
She was very sad that evening.
If she could have got by herself she would have cried.
But perhaps it was just as well that she couldn’t; it was no good making oneself bad blood.
It had been a foolish dream.
She would get over her unhappiness; after all, she was used to it.
It would have been much worse if he had been her lover and thrown her over.
Monday passed, Tuesday came; but no petit bleu.
She was certain that it would be there when she got back from work.
Nothing.
She had an hour before she need think of getting ready, and she passed it waiting with sickening anxiety for the bell to ring; she dressed with the feeling that she was foolish to take the trouble, for the message would arrive before she was finished.
She wondered if it were possible that he would let her go to the cinema and not turn up.
It would be heartless, it would be cruel, but she knew that he was under his mother’s thumb, she suspected he was weak, and it might be that to let her go to a meeting-place and not come himself would seem to him the best way, brutal though it was, to show her that he was done with her.
No sooner had this notion occurred to her than she was sure of it and she nearly decided not to go.
Nevertheless she went.
After all, if he could be so beastly it would prove that she was well rid of him.
But he was there all right and when he saw her walking along he came towards her with the springy gait which marked his eager vitality.
On his face shone his sweet smile.
His spirits seemed even higher than usual.
“I’m not in the mood for the pictures this evening,” he said.
“Let us have a drink at Fouquet’s and then go for a drive.
I’ve got a car just round the corner.”
“If you like.”
It was fine and dry, though cold, and the stars in the frosty night seemed to laugh with a good-natured malice at the gaudy lights of the Champs-Elysees.
They had a glass of beer, Robert meanwhile talking nineteen to the dozen, and then they walked up the Avenue George V to where he had parked his car.
Lydia was puzzled.
He talked quite naturally, but she had no notion what were his powers of dissimulation, and she could not help asking herself whether he proposed the drive in order to break unhappy news to her.
He was an emotional creature, sometimes, she had discovered, even a trifle theatrical, (but that amused rather than offended her), and she wondered whether he were setting the stage for an affecting scene of renunciation.
“This isn’t the same car that you had on Sunday,” she said, when they came to it.
“No.
It belongs to a friend who wants to sell.
I said I wanted to show it to a possible purchaser.”
They drove to the Arc de Triomphe and then along the Avenue Foch till they came to the Bois.
It was dark there except when they met the head-lights of a car coming towards them, and deserted except for a car parked here and there in which one surmised a couple was engaged in amorous conversation.
Presently Robert drew up at the kerb.
“Shall we stop here and smoke a cigarette?” he said.
“You’re not cold?”
“No.”