“I do not know,” she said. “The worl’ it is not nice.” She shook her head disapprovingly. “All men are not nice.... It is ver’ hard, and sometimes I am most unhappy. It is so.”
“But you are happy now?”
She pointed her finger down at the sidewalk. “Now—thees minute—yes. In one hour in four hours it may not be so. Who can say?”
It brought him again to his going away, and a real dread of making the announcement to her seized upon him. He was afraid she would cry or do some other equally distressing thing. But that was selfish. He dreaded her crying because it would be unpleasant for himself and was rather ashamed of it. He even fancied he could understand something of how she would actually feel, but he was wrong. He was groping in the darkness, wandering in the darkness of a strange mansion with many rooms and devious passages, and it was inevitable that he should miss his way....
They entered Marty’s and Monsieur Robert came forward to greet them with that delicious, boyish smile of his.
“I am glad you come,” he said, bobbing his head. “My friends they shall be jealous to see me wit’ such pretty girl.”
Andree was very prim and quiet with that quaint attractive quietness that always made Kendall wonder, because he had never seen anything like it. It was a sort of waiting quietness, a kind of recess that Andree retired into to await events, and from which she would emerge impish or girlish or serious, like a child or like a weary woman. One felt she was not present bodily, but was staring at one expectantly to read one’s mood, or, possibly, to read one into the future and to foretell if good or ill were to come out of it. Now she watched Monsieur Robert when he was not looking at her, but the instant his eyes turned toward her her own eyes would hide behind their lashes diffidently.
“What shall we eat?” Monsieur Robert asked, in French. “Potage? Poulet rôti, cresson? Haricots verts? Salade?... Eh?”
“Sounds good,” said Kendall, but monsieur was looking expectantly to Andree.
“That is well,” she said.