Betty disliked the picture.
"I think perhaps," she said, translating mentally as she spoke, "that I should do better to go to another hotel, if there is only one man here and he is—"
She saw days made tiresome by the dodging of a lunatic—nights made tremulous by a lunatic's yelling soliloquies.
"Ah," said Madame Chevillon comfortably, "I thought Mademoiselle was artist; and for the artists and the Spaniards the convenances exist not. But Mademoiselle is also English. They eat the convenances every day with the soup.—See then, my cherished. The English man, he is not a dangerous fool, only a beast of the good God; he has the atelier and the room at the end of the corridor. But there is, besides the Hotel, the Garden Pavilion, un appartement of two rooms, exquisite, on the first, and the garden room that opens big upon the terrace. It is there that Mademoiselle will be well!"
Betty thought so too, when she had seen the "rooms exquisite on the first"—neat, bare, well-scrubbed rooms with red-tiled floors, scanty rugs and Frenchly varnished furniture—the garden room too, with big open hearth and no furniture but wicker chairs and tables.
"Mademoiselle can eat all alone on the terrace. The English mad shall not approach. I will charge myself with that. Mademoiselle may repose herself here as on the bosom of the mother of Mademoiselle."
Betty had her déjeuner on the little stone terrace with rickety rustic railings. Below lay the garden, thick with trees.
Away among the trees to the left an arbour. She saw through the leaves the milk-white gleam of flannels, heard the chink of china and cutlery. There, no doubt, the mad Englishman was even now breakfasting. There was the width of the garden between them. She sat still till the flannel gleam had gone away among the trees. Then she went out and explored the little town. She bought a blue packet of cigarettes. Miss Voscoe had often tried to persuade her to smoke. Most of the girls did. Betty had not wanted to do it any more for that. She had had a feeling that Vernon would not like her to smoke.
And in Paris one had to be careful. But now—
"I am absolutely my own master," she said. "I am staying by myself at a hotel, exactly like a man. I shall feel more at home if I smoke. And besides, no one can see me. It's just for me. And it shows I don't care what he likes."