“What would you feel?”
“Well, I don’t know. Oh, you know, when you look at things a long time, and when you like to sit and smoke and look inside yourself.”
“I didn’t know I did that. I don’t see much if I do.”
“Well, you do. And I asked Mr. Martin about it and he said it was education, and he said his brother-in-law was like that before he went off his head with religion. And often when I look at you and you are like that I want to put my arms round you and hold you until you stop doing it, and begin to think of me a little.”
“But I do think of you all the time.”
Then she put her arms round him and held him close until he forgot all but her in the dark pleasure that is called love.
And again he drifted and supposed himself content, until one day when a young man hailed him and told him to drive to Islington where there was an exhibition of modern engineering. Halfway there, the young man stopped the car, leaped out excitedly, gripped René by the arm, and cried:
“Good Lord, if it isn’t old René!”
It was Kurt Brock.