“But are you not coming back to Paris?” asked Bonvalot.
“No, Monsieur Bonvalot, not at present!” He pulled his whiskers.
The idea had suddenly come to him, and come to him strongly, that she was about to do “something foolish.”
He had seen women do very foolish things in the course of his business life and all that talk of hers at the luncheon table came back to him now.
He remembered the beautiful Mademoiselle de Lacy who had run off and married a groom; could it be possible that Cléo contemplated any such mad act with that terrific sailor man? The idea chilled his heart.
Equality and Fraternity were parts of his motto and he was an honest socialist; he believed honestly that all men were equals and that the waiters who served him at table were as good as himself, with a difference of course due to the accidents of life, but he believed, with Daudet, that there is no greater abyss than class difference.
His theory was confounded by this practice. But he could say nothing, for the matter was too delicate to be touched upon.