This protracted silence is becoming more unbearable than his admission.
If he’d only go . . . but he doesn’t budge.
I risk not even the slightest movement, fearing lest a sigh or the rippling of my robe might be enough to revivify my adversary—I no longer dare say “my admirer,” no, he loves me too much! . . .
“You have nothing more to say to me?”
The sound of his voice, gentler now, gives me such keen pleasure that I smile, freed from that silence which wouldn’t let me breathe.
“Goodness! I really don’t see . . .”
He turns toward me, with the cumbersome affability of a big dog:
“It’s true, you don’t see . . . Oh, you have a talent for not seeing!
As soon as it comes to me, you don’t see, you don’t see a thing!
You look right through me, you smile over my head, you speak right past me! . . .
And I pretend to be a man who doesn’t see that you don’t see.
How clever!
How worthy of you and of me.”
“Listen, Dufferein-Chautel . . .”
“And you call me Dufferein-Chautel!
I know I have a ridiculous name, like a congressman’s or an industrialist’s or the head of a discount bank! It’s not my fault! . . .
Yes, yes, laugh! . . . At least I consider myself lucky,” he adds more quietly, “if I can make you laugh . . .”
“Come now, what do you want me to call you?
Dufferein? Chautel?
Or Duduffe?
Or . . . just plain Maxime, or Max? . . .
Oh, please give me my hand mirror, there on the little table, and my powder puff: what my face must look like! . . .
The champagne, my snooze, and no more powder on my nose!”
“It doesn’t matter!” he says, impatiently. “For whose benefit do you want to powder yourself at this hour?”
“For mine, first of all.
And then for yours.”
“For mine it isn’t worth the trouble.
You treat me like a man who’s courting you. What if I were simply a man who’s in love with you?”
I look at him, more mistrustfully than ever before, disconcerted to find in this man, now that it’s a question of love between us, a particular intelligence and an ease of manner so well concealed beneath his Big Ninny exterior.
An aptitude for love, yes, that’s what I divine in him, that’s where he surpasses and embarrasses me!
“Tell me frankly, Renee . . . Is knowing that I love you hateful to you, or a matter of indifference, or vaguely pleasant?”
He isn’t offensive, he’s neither humble nor tearful, there’s nothing shy or cautious about him . . . Emulating his directness, I become emboldened and reply:
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“That’s just what I thought,” he says, seriously. “In that case . . .”
“In that case?”
“There’s nothing for it but to say goodbye!”
“It’s half-past twelve.”
“No, you misunderstood.
I mean, never to see you again, to leave Paris!”
“To leave Paris?
Why?” I ask candidly. “There’s no need to.
And I haven’t forbidden you to see me again.”
He shrugs his shoulders:
“Oh, I know what I’m doing! . . . When things go wrong, when I have . . . troubles, in short, I go back to our place.”
He really did say “our place,” like a man from the provinces, tenderly.
“Is it nice where you are?”
“Yes.
There’s the forest, a lot of firs, plenty of oaks.
I like fresh cuttings, you know, when the woods have been chopped down and only the saplings are left, and the big circles where they’ve burned charcoal, and where strawberries grow the following summer . . .”
“And lily-of-the-valley . . .”