“I’m afraid not.”
“Pourquoi non?”
“I’m hoping to meet someone.”
She released me at once with a good-natured smile. “La! La! I hopes you find ’er.”
She tripped away, turning before she was lost in the crowd to wave her hand. I told myself that her flower was the jonquil.
It was one o’clock when, after wandering about, I found myself back at the same place. I could not sleep; my brain was too active with excitement. Instead of being sad because of Fiesole, I was unreasonably elated. I took a seat at a table on the pavement and ordered coffee and cognac. Every man and woman within sight was a lover, and I sat solitary. As the hour grew later men and women grew more frank in their embraces, and all with that naïve assumption of privacy which makes the Frenchman, even in his vices, seem so much a child. The sex-instinct beat about “the mountain”—the air quivered and pulsated.
Girls rustled in the shadows. Lovers, chance-met, danced home together. Strange to say, I found nothing sinful in it—only romance. I had ceased to look beyond the immediate sensation.
“Poor boy! You not find ’er?”
I looked up; my lady of the jonquils was leaning over my shoulder.
“No.”