He was thinking that he must indeed have forgotten her name, for the one she had pronounced awakened no association. But he could hardly tell her that. “I’m thinking of San Pablo.”
“The back piazza at my sister’s? Oh don’t; it was too horrid. She has left now. I believe every one has left.” The member of Parliament drew out his watch with the air of a man who could take no part in these domestic reminiscences; he appeared to combine a generic self-possession with a degree of individual shyness. He said something about its being time they should go back to their seats, but Mrs. Headway paid no attention to the remark. Waterville wished her to linger and indeed felt almost as free to examine her as he had to walk, in a different spirit, round the statue of the author of Candide. Her low-growing hair, with its fine dense undulations, was of a shade of blackness that has now become rare; her complexion had the bloom of a white flower; her profile, when she turned her head, was as pure and fine as the outline of a cameo. “You know this is their first theatre,” she continued, as if to rise to the occasion. “And this is Voltaire, the celebrated writer.”
“I’m devoted to the Comédie Française”—Waterville rose as well.
“Dreadfully bad house; we didn’t hear a word,” said Sir Arthur Demesne.
“Ah, yes, the sad far boxes!” murmured Waterville.
“I’m rather disappointed,” Mrs. Headway went on. “But I want to see what becomes of that woman.”
“Doña Clorinde? Oh I suppose they’ll shoot her. They generally shoot the women in French plays,” Littlemore said.
“It will remind me of San Pablo!” cried Mrs. Headway.
“Ah, at San Pablo the women did the shooting.”
“They don’t seem to have killed you!” she returned archly.