“He's gone to Brussels. He won't be back till tomorrow.”
“I suppose one must pay for one's dinner,” said Jeanne maliciously.
“Good God, no.” Andrews buried his face in his hands. The singsong of the river pouring through the bridges, filled his ears. He wanted desperately to cry. Bitter desire that was like hatred made his flesh tingle, made his hands ache to crush her hands in them.
“Come along,” he said gruffly.
“I didn't mean to say that,” she said in a gentle, tired voice. “You know, I'm not a very nice person.” The greenish glow of the lamp lit up the contour of one of her cheeks as she tilted her head up, and glimmered in her eyes. A soft sentimental sadness suddenly took hold of Andrews; he felt as he used to feel when, as a very small child, his mother used to tell him Br' Rabbit stories, and he would feel himself drifting helplessly on the stream of her soft voice, narrating, drifting towards something unknown and very sad, which he could not help.
They started walking again, past the Pont Neuf, towards the glare of the Place St. Michel. Three names had come into Andrews's head, “Arsinoe, Berenike, Artemisia.” For a little while he puzzled over them, and then he remembered that Genevieve Rod had the large eyes and the wide, smooth forehead and the firm little lips the women had in the portraits that were sewn on the mummy cases in the Fayum. But those patrician women of Alexandria had not had chestnut hair with a glimpse of burnished copper in it; they might have dyed it, though!
“Why are you laughing?” asked Jeanne.
“Because things are so silly.”
“Perhaps you mean people are silly,” she said, looking up at him out of the corners of her eyes.
“You're right.”