During his absence she and I sat together, talking or in silence, I smoking, she sewing; if the evening was fine and warm, we sat in the armchairs by the little table in the window; if the weather was chilly—and in that dingy stone-floored room it was apt to seem chillier than it was—Louis made us a little fire of chips and logs, and we sat close by it. The old fleeting intimacy of Ste. Maxime renewed itself between us. After five or six evenings spent in this fashion, it almost seemed as though Arsenio were a visitor who came and went, while she and I belonged to the establishment.
“The atmosphere’s quite domestic,” I said to her with a smile. It was cold that night; we were close by the fire; her fingers were busy with her work under the light of the one lamp which showed up her face in clear outline—just as it had been defined against the gloom of the dark salle-à-manger at Ste. Maxime.
“Well, you see, you’re a restful sort of person to be with,” she answered, smiling, but not looking up, and going on with her sewing.
We had not talked much more about her affairs, or Arsenio’s. She seemed to think that enough had been said as to those, on the Lido; her conversation had been mostly on general matters, though she also took pleasure in describing to me the incidents and humors of her business hours, both here at Venice and in the past at Ste. Maxime and Nice. To-night I felt impelled to get a little nearer to her secret thoughts again.
“Wasn’t Waldo restful—barring an occasional storm?”
“Yes; but then—as I’ve told you—at that time I wasn’t. Never for an hour really. Now I am. I should be quite content to go on just as we are forever.” She looked up and gave me a smile. “I include you in ‘we’, Julius. You give me a sense of safety.”
“You can’t sell needlework on the Piazza all your life,” I expostulated.
“Really I could quite happily, if only I were let alone—otherwise. But I shan’t be, of course. Arsenio will get tired of his present tactics soon—the ones he’s followed since you came. We shall either go back to storms and heroics again, or he’ll discover something else. Just now he’s trying the patient, the pathetic! But he won’t stick to that long. It’s not in his nature.”
How calmly now she analyzed and dissected him! With amusement still mingled with her scorn, but—it must be repeated—with the old proportions terribly reversed. It cannot be denied that there was something cruel in the relentless vision of him which she had now achieved.
“He’ll try something spectacular next, I expect,” she pursued, delicately biting off a thread.