“Oh, how many more are there before the top of the hill is reached? The horses haven’t trotted once. Surely it isn’t necessary for them to walk the whole way.”
“We shall be there in a minute now,” he said, and took out his cigarette-case. At that she turned round towards him. She clasped her hands and held them against her breast; her dark eyes looked immense, imploring, behind her veil; her nostrils quivered, she bit her lip, and her head shook with a little nervous spasm. But when she spoke, her voice was quite weak and very, very calm.
“I want to ask you something. I want to beg something of you,” she said. “I’ve asked you hundreds and hundreds of times before, but you’ve forgotten. It’s such a little thing, but if you knew what it meant to me. . . .” She pressed her hands together. “But you can’t know. No human creature could know and be so cruel.” And then, slowly, deliberately, gazing at him with those huge, sombre eyes: “I beg and implore you for the last time that when we are driving together you won’t smoke. If you could imagine,” she said, “the anguish I suffer when that smoke comes floating across my face. . . .”
“Very well,” he said. “I won’t. I forgot.” And he put the case back.
“Oh, no,” said she, and almost began to laugh, and put the back of her hand across her eyes. “You couldn’t have forgotten. Not that.”
The wind came, blowing stronger. They were at the top of the hill. “Hoy-yip-yip-yip,” cried the driver. They swung down the road that fell into a small valley, skirted the sea coast at the bottom of it, and then coiled over a gentle ridge on the other side. Now there were houses again, blue-shuttered against the heat, with bright burning gardens, with geranium carpets flung over the pinkish walls. The coast-line was dark; on the edge of the sea a white silky fringe just stirred. The carriage swung down the hill, bumped, shook. “Yi-ip,” shouted the driver. She clutched the sides of the seat, she closed her eyes, and he knew she felt this was happening on purpose; this swinging and bumping, this was all done—and he was responsible for it, somehow—to spite her because she had asked if they couldn’t go a little faster. But just as they reached the bottom of the valley there was one tremendous lurch. The carriage nearly overturned, and he saw her eyes blaze at him, and she positively hissed, “I suppose you are enjoying this?”
They went on. They reached the bottom of the valley. Suddenly she stood up. “Cocher! Cocher! Arrêtez-vous!” She turned round and looked into the crumpled hood behind. “I knew it,” she exclaimed. “I knew it. I heard it fall, and so did you, at that last bump.”
“What? Where?”
“My parasol. It’s gone. The parasol that belonged to my mother. The parasol that I prize more than—more than . . .” She was simply beside herself. The driver turned round, his gay, broad face smiling.
“I, too, heard something,” said he, simply and gaily. “But I thought as Monsieur and Madame said nothing . . .”