if you like—­but not touching your real relationships.  Women bluff a lot on the subject and many are fools.  They believe in the same law for both sexes.  It is a ridiculous fallacy.  Only Edmond was different.  He loved women—­psychologically.  He was therefore inconstant, which is the real sin against marriage.  He was a great lover, an artist.  Every woman was to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist.  The colours and the sounds he got were marvellous.  Sometimes he would try impossible subjects—­for fun—­but always he could bring some sort of harmony out of everything.  Ma foi, it amuses me to watch him now—­now that it is difficult, and he is fifty-six and I don’t love him—­but then, when everything was easy and he was twenty-seven and I cared—­then it was—­well, it was different.”

The way that her voice opened and shut reminded him of a sea anemone.

“It is not the way to talk to a stranger, is it?” she said abruptly, “but I feel as if I had known you for a long time.  For twenty-five years, to be exact,” she added.

Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied.  He longed to tell her about Marthe.  For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to make.  He wondered why.

“Bon soir, Monsieur,” she said, and she walked up to bed with a characteristic lack of pause or hesitation.

Maurice woke up—­was woken up—­knowing that he had something to look forward to.  Sleepily he wondered what it was while patterns spread over his semi-consciousness—­dreamily he saw Marthe in a filmy lace dress over black and he felt himself trying to play on a grand piano, every note of which was a sea anemone.  Then he woke up completely, and with a delightful rush he remembered Madame and all of the marvellous things that she had told him and all of the significant things he had not yet said to her.

He walked down to breakfast whistling.  In the courtyard he patted the dog and lifted the patron’s son on to his shoulder, then he asked the patronne if the cook had a name and whether he might some day come and watch her churn butter.  In the dining room he praised the coffee, and admired the geraniums.  St. Jean-les-Flots must have a particularly fine soil for geraniums, and what air!  Why, he felt a different man already.

Madame Marly—­he had discovered her name—­did not appear till lunch.  They bowed to one another, and each talked a little to the waiter.  It was delightful to keep their pleasure at arm’s length.  Coffee on the terrace brought them together.

“You are right,” she said, “the country is an impossible place.  It makes one talk.”

“I love the country,” he said.

“And then the sea.  It is always going on without you.”

“I have a passion for the sea,” he murmured.

“I would like to wring the neck of the cook, chloroform the dog, buy
Marie Aimee some lawn tennis shoes, and have a daily box of flowers from
Paris.”