She smiled in silence.

As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she said—­

“I’m all alone in the flat.  I’m disinfecting it.”

“Then that is sulphur that I smell?”

She nodded.  “Excuse me while I finish this door,” she said.

He closed the front-door.  “But you seem to be quite at home here!” he observed.

“I ought to be,” said she.

He glanced again inquiringly up and down the corridor.  “And you are really all alone now?” he asked, as though to be doubly sure.

She explained the circumstances.

“I owe you my most sincere excuses for bringing you here,” he said confidentially.

“But why?” she replied, looking intently at her door.  “They have been most kind to me.  Nobody could have been kinder.  And Madame Laurence being such a good nurse——­”

“It is true,” said he.  “That was a reason.  In effect they are both very good-natured little women. ...  You comprehend, as journalist it arrives to me to know all kinds of people ...”  He snapped his fingers ...  “And as we were opposite the house.  In fine, I pray you to excuse me.”

“Hold me this paper,” she said.  “It is necessary that every crack should be covered; also between the floor and the door.”

“You English are wonderful,” he murmured, as he took the paper.  “Imagine you doing that!  Then,” he added, resuming the confidential tone, “I suppose you will leave the Foucault now, hein?”

“I suppose so,” she said carelessly.

“You go to England?”

She turned to him, as she patted the creases out of a strip of paper with a duster, and shook her head.

“Not to England?”

“No.”

“If it is not indiscreet, where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” she said candidly.

And she did not know.  She was without a plan.  Her brain told her that she ought to return to Bursley, or, at the least, write.  But her pride would not hear of such a surrender.  Her situation would have to be far more desperate than it was before she could confess her defeat to her family even in a letter.  A thousand times no!  That was a point which she had for ever decided.  She would face any disaster, and any other shame, rather than the shame of her family’s forgiving reception of her.

“And you?” she asked.  “How does it go?  This war?”

He told her, in a few words, a few leading facts about himself.  “It must not be said,” he added of the war, “but that will turn out ill!  I—­I know, you comprehend.”

“Truly?” she answered with casualness.

“You have heard nothing of him?” Chirac asked.

“Who?  Gerald?”

He gave a gesture.

“Nothing!  Not a word!  Nothing!”

“He will have gone back to England!”

“Never!” she said positively.

“But why not?”

“Because he prefers France.  He really does like France.  I think it is the only real passion he ever had.”