I don’t ask you to think I’m reasonable.
I only ask you to understand that I can’t help myself.
I believe that somehow—how I don’t know—my humiliation, my degradation, my bitter, ceaseless pain, will wash his soul clean, and even if we never see one another again he will be restored to me.”
Charley sighed.
It was all strange to him, strange, morbid and disturbing.
He did not know what to make of it.
He felt more than ever ill-at-ease with that alien woman with her crazy fancies; and yet she looked ordinary enough, a prettyish little thing, not very well dressed; a typist or a girl in the post-office.
Just then, at the Terry-Masons’, they would probably have started dancing; they would be wearing the paper caps they’d got out of the crackers at dinner.
Some of the chaps would be a bit tight, but hang it all, on Christmas Day no one could mind.
There’d have been a lot of kissing under the mistletoe, a lot of fun, a lot of ragging, a lot of laughter; they were all having a grand time.
It seemed very far away, but thank God, it was there, normal, decent, sane and real; this was a nightmare.
A nightmare?
He wondered if there was anything in what she said, this woman with her tragic history and her miserable life, that God had died when he created the wide world; and was he lying dead on some vast mountain range on a dead star or was he absorbed into the universe he had caused to be?
It was rather funny, if you came to think of it, Lady Terry-Mason rounding up all the house party to go to church on Christmas morning.
And his own father backing her up.
“I don’t pretend I’m much of a church-goer myself, but I think one ought to go on Christmas Day.
I mean, I think it sets a good example.”
That’s what he would say.
“Don’t look so serious,” said Lydia.
“Let’s go.”
They walked along the forbidding, sordid street that leads from the Avenue du Maine to the Place de Rennes, and there Lydia suggested that they should go to the news reel for an hour.
It was the last performance of the day.
Then they had a glass of beer and went back to the hotel.
Lydia took off her hat and the fur she wore round her neck.
She looked at Charley thoughtfully.
“If you want to come to bed with me you can, you know,” she said in just the same tone as she might have used if she had asked him if he would like to go to the Rotonde or the Dome.
Charley caught his breath.
All his nerves revolted from the idea.
After what she had told him he could not have touched her.
His mouth for a moment went grim with anger; he really was not going to have her mortify her flesh at his expense.
But his native politeness prevented him from uttering the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
“Oh, I don’t think so, thank you.”
“Why not?
I’m there for that and that’s what you came to Paris for, isn’t it?
Isn’t that why all you English come to Paris?”
“I don’t know.
Anyhow I didn’t.”
“What else did you come for?”
“Well, partly to see some pictures.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“It’s just as you like.”
She went into the bathroom.
Charley was a trifle piqued that she accepted his refusal with so much unconcern.
He thought at least she might have given him credit for his delicacy.
Because perhaps she owed him something, at least board and lodging for twenty-four hours, he might well have looked upon it as a right to take what she offered; it wouldn’t have been unbecoming if she had thanked him for his disinterestedness.
He was inclined to sulk.
He undressed, and when she came in from the bathroom, in his dressing-gown, he went in to wash his teeth.
She was in bed when he returned.
“Will it bother you if I read a little before I go to sleep?” he asked.
“No.