Part 3 — V

THEY went back. It was midsummer. Paris was just like Greece: the Madeleine full of Americans, the Champs Elysées deserted, burnt up and inhabited by goats. There was a water famine. The Grand Prix had been won by a Greek.

Lewis and Irene lived an Oriental life behind closed shutters. But they were no longer on an island, and some of the warm, ribald charm of the months gone by lingered in the empty streets, and when the tourists' chars-à-bancs had disappeared there remained in the air something eager, dexterous and precious, which Paris will always retain, even when there are no more Frenchmen to live there.

They saw no one. Irene disliked people. She never spoke to them. "In Paris," she said, "people always seem to be expecting you to surprise them. I have nothing to give them. I only expect you, Lewis. So long as I am alone with you I am happy. I like the lower classes, children and animals: but here children always look ill, animals are ill-treated, and the work-people are nothing but greedy snobs."

They spent the mornings in bed. Lewis had kept some of his racehorses. He telephoned from his bed to Orne and Calvados to hear the latest about their shoes, their teeth and their tendons. The days passed, each one like the last. In the evening they emptied champagne bottles outside Paris in cardboard mills with old-fashioned bar parlours; they had foreign foods cooked at their table with so much brandy in the sauces that they ate in the midst of flames.

"We are spending money recklessly," said Irene, "and we are making none. We must think of that. Call me cheeseparing if you like."

"Bah!" answered Lewis. "It is bad enough not to have any money; but its far worse to stint oneself when one has."

They never went into Society. Lewis' marriage had been received with boisterous silence. He accepted the fact philosophically.

"Our union is far from being blessed; we cannot hope to please people. Both on your side and mine a certain number of people were annoyed, but the greater number were quite indifferent. Nothing is left but the natural hostility evoked by the sight of a happy couple and which we must get used to. If we ever want to see people again we have only to suffer some of those misfortunes which make it possible for our friends to breathe the same air as we do."

Idleness is the mother of all the vices, but vice is the father of all the arts. They began to go to museums. The one Irene preferred was the Naval Museum, because of the sailing ships. She had not the least artistic sense. She was quite happy living amongst ugly things. Of our art she only knew what the East knows: Ziem, Diaz, Meisonnier, Detaille. Lewis, who had looked up the Peloponnesian wars before going to Greece, wanted to explain French history to her. But he found that she knew the dates of the births and deaths of all our kings. Irene's idea of France was that rather faded, ridiculous and frail, but at the same time accurate and pathetic, picture of her that is given in Levantine schools. The only kind of food she liked was stuffed courgettes, pilaff of tomatoes with Corinthian raisins and sweet wines. Lewis revealed to her the secrets of French life, which are love and to have everything cooked in butter.

They never left one another. They lived quite remote from the hours of seven in the morning and seven in the evening, those iron blades which cut short the sweetest of assignations in the intimacy of heated rooms.

In love, Irene, like all Eastern women, was very frugal and had the simplest tastes. Lewis' large bed made her blush. She accepted his caresses with alarm and gave none back. When Lewis surprised her in her bath she put her hand to her mouth like a nymph surprised by a god.

"You can't imagine how you frightened me," she would say. And when he approached she gave him the nape of her neck.

Lewis, from habit, tried to rally her to pleasure.

"In love you must not unchain everything that sleeps in a woman," she objected. "Afterwards no one can control it. Think of the wizard's apprentice in German stories."

Like all those to whom debauchery is an old friend, Lewis felt the restraint of all this. It made Irene irresistible to him; there was so much passion in her features and even some hint of savage tendencies. And yet at every attempt he encountered nothing but prudery and a marble coldness.

Lewis exerted his experience, his subtlety and a certain low cunning. At first his results were all cut short. But he renewed his attempts. Where he had found Irene astonished now she only hesitated. He obtained more influence over her daily and he felt her yielding. At last he had to admit to himself that, perhaps to please him only, she was progressing. He did not hesitate to use her for his pleasure, without seeing that he risked spoiling her or losing her.

"What exactly is meant by going on the loose?" asked Irene.

"How shall I put it? It is throwing paper serpentines about instead of sleeping, taking drugs or one's pleasure where one finds it."

"What, exactly, do you mean by that?"

"Oh! nothing."

"I don't understand," said Irene, puzzled.