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_ At half-past two they were alone in the little salon of the
restaurant, and vaguely in their dreamy and feverish minds that
were too preoccupied to control with precision their warm, relaxed
bodies, there floated the illusion that the restaurant belonged to
them and that in it they were at home. It was no longer a
restaurant, but a retreat and shelter from hard life. The chef and
his wife were dozing in an inner room. The champagne was drunk;
the adorable cheese was eaten; and they were sipping Marc de
Bourgogne. They sat at right angles to one another, close to one
another, with brains aswing; full of good nature and quick
sympathy; their flesh content and yet expectant. In a pause of the
conversation (which, entirely banal and fragmentary, had seemed to
reach the acme of agreeableness), Chirac put his hand on the hand
of Sophia as it rested limp on the littered table. Accidentally
she caught his eye; she had not meant to do so. They both became
self-conscious. His thin, bearded face had more than ever that
wistfulness which always softened towards him the
uncompromisingness of her character. He had the look of a child.
For her, Gerald had sometimes shown the same look. But indeed she
was now one of those women for whom all men, and especially all
men in a tender mood, are invested with a certain incurable
quality of childishness. She had not withdrawn her hand at once,
and so she could not withdraw it at all.
He gazed at her with timid audacity. Her eyes were liquid.
"What are you thinking about?" she asked.
"I was asking myself what I should have done if you had refused to
come."
"And what SHOULD you have done?"
"Assuredly something terribly inconvenient," he replied, with the
large importance of a man who is in the domain of pure
supposition. He leaned towards her. "My very dear friend," he said
in a different voice, getting bolder.
It was infinitely sweet to her, voluptuously sweet, this basking
in the heat of temptation. It certainly did seem to her, then, the
one real pleasure in the world. Her body might have been saying to
his: "See how ready I am!" Her body might have been saying to his:
"Look into my mind. For you I have no modesty. Look and see all
that is there." The veil of convention seemed to have been rent.
Their attitude to each other was almost that of lover and
mistress, between whom a single glance may be charged with the
secrets of the past and promises for the future. Morally she was
his mistress in that moment.
He released her hand and put his arm round her waist.
"I love thee," he whispered with great emotion.
Her face changed and hardened. "You must not do that," she said,
coldly, unkindly, harshly. She scowled. She would not abate one
crease in her forehead to the appeal of his surprised glance. Yet
she did not want to repulse him. The instinct which repulsed him
was not within her control. Just as a shy man will obstinately
refuse an invitation which he is hungering to accept, so, though
not from shyness, she was compelled to repulse Chirac. Perhaps if
her desires had not been laid to sleep by excessive physical
industry and nervous strain, the sequel might have been different.
Chirac, like most men who have once found a woman weak, imagined
that he understood women profoundly. He thought of women as the
Occidental thinks of the Chinese, as a race apart, mysterious but
capable of being infallibly comprehended by the application of a
few leading principles of psychology. Moreover he was in earnest;
he was hard driven, and he was honest. He continued, respectfully
obedient in withdrawing his arm:
"Very dear friend," he urged with undaunted confidence, "you must
know that I love you."
She shook her head impatiently, all the time wondering what it was
that prevented her from slipping into his arms. She knew that she
was treating him badly by this brusque change of front; but she
could not help it. Then she began to feel sorry for him.
"We have been very good friends," he said. "I have always admired
you enormously. I did not think that I should dare to love you
until that day when I overheard that old villain Niepce make his
advances. Then, when I perceived my acute jealousy, I knew that I
was loving you. Ever since, I have thought only of you. I swear to
you that if you will not belong to me, it is already finished for
me! Altogether! Never have I seen a woman like you! So strong, so
proud, so kind, and so beautiful! You are astonishing, yes,
astonishing! No other woman could have drawn herself out of an
impossible situation as you have done, since the disappearance of
your husband. For me, you are a woman unique. I am very sincere.
Besides, you know it ... Dear friend!"
She shook her head passionately.
She did not love him. But she was moved. And she wanted to love
him. She wanted to yield to him, only liking him, and to love
afterwards. But this obstinate instinct held her back. "I do not
say, now," Chirac went on. "Let me hope."
The Latin theatricality of his gestures and his tone made her
sorrowful for him.
"My poor Chirac!" she plaintively murmured, and began to put on
her gloves.
"I shall hope!" he persisted.
She pursed her lips. He seized her violently by the waist. She
drew her face away from his, firmly. She was not hard, not angry
now. Disconcerted by her compassion, he loosed her.
"My poor Chirac," she said, "I ought not to have come. I must go.
It is perfectly useless. Believe me."
"No, no!" he whispered fiercely.
She stood up and the abrupt movement pushed the table gratingly
across the floor. The throbbing spell of the flesh was snapped
like a stretched string, and the scene over. The landlord, roused
from his doze, stumbled in. Chirac had nothing but the bill as a
reward for his pains. He was baffled.
They left the restaurant, silently, with a foolish air.
Dusk was falling on the mournful streets, and the lamp-lighters
were lighting the miserable oil lamps that had replaced gas. They
two, and the lamplighters, and an omnibus were alone in the
streets. The gloom was awful; it was desolating. The universal
silence seemed to be the silence of despair. Steeped in woe,
Sophia thought wearily upon the hopeless problem of existence. For
it seemed to her that she and Chirac had created this woe out of
nothing, and yet it was an incurable woe! _
Read next: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VII - SUCCESS: PART I
Read previous: BOOK III SOPHIA: CHAPTER VI - THE SIEGE: PART IV
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