“Because he prefers France. He really does like France. I think it is the only real passion he ever had.”
“It is astonishing,” reflected Chirac, “how France is loved! And yet...! But to live, what will he do? Must live!”
Sophia merely shrugged her shoulders.
“Then it is finished between you two?” he muttered awkwardly.
She nodded. She was on her knees, at the lower crack of the doors.
“There!” she said, rising. “It’s well done, isn’t it? That is all.”
She smiled at him, facing him squarely, in the obscurity of the untidy and shabby corridor. Both felt that they had become very intimate. He was intensely flattered by her attitude, and she knew it.
“Now,” she said, “I will take off my pinafore. Where can I niche you? There is only my bedroom, and I want that. What are we to do?”
“Listen,” he suggested diffidently. “Will you do me the honour to come for a drive? That will do you good. There is sunshine. And you are always very pale.”
“With pleasure,” she agreed cordially.