He nodded and smiled.
"Even be my mistress. That is not the worst thing that could happen.
But you remember my terms."
She looked into his face.
"You're a very kind man, Jacques," she said, remembering the afternoon she had first heard them.
She and Peggy had been in Paris a few months and had just found their apartment, after her father had given his permission for her to stay in Paris for a year.
Peggy had taken her to a party given by a professor at the University, where she had just begun to work.
Rina felt very alone at the party.
Her French was not good enough to let her mix easily and she had retreated to a corner.
She was leafing through a magazine when she heard a voice.
"Miss Americaine?"
She looked up.
A slim, dark man with a touch of gray at his temples was standing there.
He was smiling gently.
"Non parle fran- "
"I speak English," he said quickly. She smiled. "And what is a pretty girl like you doing all alone with a magazine?" he asked.
"Who is fool enough to bring you to a party like this and then- " He gestured expressively.
"My friend brought me," Rina said, indicating Peggy. "She has just got a job at the University."
Peggy was talking animatedly with one of the professors.
She looked very attractive in her slim, tailored suit.
"Oh," he said, a strangely quizzical look on his face. "And whom did you bring?"
"No one." He shrugged. "Actually. I came in the hopes of meeting you."
She glanced at his hands and saw that he wore a wedding ring, as so many Frenchmen did.
"You don't expect me to believe that?" she said.
"What would your wife say?"
He smiled and laughed with her.
"My wife would be very understanding.
She could not come with me. She is very, very pregnant." He held his arms out in an exaggerated circle in front of him.
She laughed again and just then, Peggy's voice came over her shoulder.
"Having fun, darling?"
Some weeks later, she was alone in the apartment one afternoon when the telephone rang.
It was Jacques and she met him for lunch.
And several times after that.
Then one afternoon – it had been a day just like this one – they sat dawdling over their liqueurs.
"Why are you so afraid of men?" he asked her suddenly.
She felt the red fire creep up into her throat and over her face. "What makes you say that?"
"I have the feeling," he said. "Inside. I know." She looked down at her drink. She didn't speak. "Your friend is not the answer," he said.
She looked up at him. "Peggy has nothing to do with it.
She's a good friend, no more."
He smiled knowingly.
"You are in France, remember?
There is nothing wrong, we understand such things.
But I do not understand you.
You are not the usual kind who lives like that."
She could feel her face flaming now.
"I don't think that's very nice of you."
He laughed. "It is not," he admitted frankly. "But I do not like to see you waste yourself."
"You'd like it better if I went to sleep with some clumsy fool who knows nothing and cares less about the way I feel?" she said angrily.
He shook his head.
"No. I would not like that at all.