Throughout the dinner time stood still, each second stagnated and told a lie. And something indefinably foul and poisonous rose from their attitude. Sometimes I felt as if I had never quitted this hypocritical spot and this gilded furniture. I held aloof from him in apparent indifference, but really to save our innocent love from their profane eyes.
They left us alone for a moment, and that moment is the one thing in the whole evening of which I retain a clear picture although scarcely a week has passed since then. In saying we were alone I am not quite accurate. A law forbade that young people should be left alone together for a single instant. My sister and her big boy of a fiancé were near us; we were not quite sure which couple had been put in custody of the other.
With arms fondly entwined about each other's waists they began to kiss and hug. She held up her lips and uncoiled the serpent of her body tantalizingly. When they were a little tired and their mouths blown, I heard a panting sentence which ended with: "You will love me always?" "Of course, always," he murmured in her ear.
I blushed. Not from offended modesty, but he and I—we had never dreamed of such vows. They seemed silly to me. How can one swear to love forever and say to a man: "Unto all eternity I shall be the most beautiful, the only one in your heart"? Always, forever, words which life at every turn refutes, how is it that a live heart would not give them the lie?
I must have looked a little haggard. My sister turning round saw that we sat apart with a gloomy, distant manner. The same thought was in his mind.
"Aren't they cold for lovers?..." By way of reply to her own question, she kissed her fiancé.
X
After fingering the deposit the old pot-bellied concierge livened up. "Money from lovers isn't mere money, it means good luck."
When he came back unexpectedly and with a paternal burr in his voice offered us "a little candle-end to take the measurements with; so often the ladies and gentlemen forget," it was chiefly to surprise us in an embrace, or some laughing dispute interlarded with kisses.
The apartment of three adjoining rooms like three cells in a honeycomb is very nice. It must be bright in summer, the stairs are kept clean, the courtyard is cool and fresh with its green lane of flower-pots. Our windows look right out on the top of the tree. A mighty rare thing, a tree in Paris. Spring mornings we shall be awakened by a fusillade of bird songs.