“Am I?”
“Where’s the good of saying ‘Am I?’ You know you are. What’s the matter? Jealous?”
“Jealous! Hardly.” He stifled a yawn. “I scarcely got a wink of sleep last night. I was keeping an eye on your friend. He was watching you all the time.”
“Then you were jealous.” She leant forward and spoke slowly. “You were rude; you acted like a spoilt child. Why on earth did you go off and glue your nose against the window? You left me to do all the talking.”
Suddenly his anger flamed; he knew that his face had gone set and white. “You didn’t need to talk to him. When are you going to stop playing fast and loose with me? I’ll tell you what it is, Desire: you haven’t any passion.”
He was sorry the moment he had said it. A spark of his resentment caught fire in her eyes. He watched it flicker out. She smiled wearily, “So you think I haven’t any passion!—Oh, well, we’re going to have fine times, now that you’ve begun to criticize.—I’m sleepy. I think I’ll go to bed.”
She rose and strolled away. Leaving his own suit-case at the cafe, he picked up hers and followed. They found a quaint hotel with a courtyard full of blossoming rhododendrons. Running round it, outside the second-story, was a balcony on to which the bedrooms opened. While he was arranging terms in the office, she went to inspect the room that was offered. In a few minutes she sent for her suitcase. He waited half-an-hour; she did not rejoin him.
At the far end of the square he had noticed an old-fashioned hostel. He claimed his baggage at the café, and took a room at the wine-tavern. Having bought a sketching-book, pencils and water-colors, he found the bridge which spans the Rhone between Avignon and Villeneuve. All morning he amused himself making drawings. About every half-hour a ramshackle bus passed him, going and returning. It was no more than boards spread across wheels, with an orange-colored canopy stretched over it. It was drawn by two lean horses, harnessed in with ropes and driven by a girl. He didn’t notice her much at first; the blue river, the white banks, the blue sky, the jagged, vineyard covered hills, and the darting of swallows claimed his attention. It was the bus that he noticed; it creaked and groaned as though it would fall to pieces. Then he saw the girl; she was young and bronzed and laughing. He traced a resemblance in her to Desire—to Desire when she was lenient and happy. She was bare-armed, bare-headed, full-breasted; her hair was black as ebony. She was always singing. About the fifth time in passing him, she smiled. He began to tell himself stories; in Desire’s absence, he watched for her as Desire’s proxy.
At mid-day he went to find Desire; he was told that she was still sleeping. He had déjeuner by himself at the café in the square from which the bus started. When the meal was ended, as he finished his carafe of wine, he made sketches of the girl. When he presented her with one of them, she accepted it from him shyly. His Anglicized French was scarcely intelligible; but after that when she passed him, she smiled more openly.
During the afternoon he called three times at the hotel. Each time he received the same reply, that Mademoiselle was sleeping.