And it was while debating with myself over this silly fancy about a man who would not dance with his wife, for some good reason that I would no doubt hit upon in due course, and while congratulating myself that I had throughout the morning successfully avoided thinking of any of my friends’ troubles, that I passed through the soft-carpeted and sombre halls of the Meurice, towards Venice, towards Venice, where she sat in a deep chair behind a paper, while in deep chairs all around sat people drinking cocktails and talking in low voices. All people talk in low voices when in the Meurice, and that, I dare venture to say, is one of the amenities peculiar to the Meurice among the hotels of all the world; but that is as it may be.
II
Venice was in high looks that day, Venice was all of a glitter, and that was because, she said at first, of this and that. But we had no sooner passed through the glass doors into the restaurant than she said, she almost cried, that something marvellous had happened just a moment before. “What do you think?” she dared me to guess, and when I said that I thought I would have some oysters she said she was too excited to eat anything, but might she have some ham and a glass of lager beer?
Venice hadn’t met my sister but once or twice, but they had met again that morning in some shop or other, “and I was complaining bitterly,” said Venice, “about Napier, how he made a perfect jumble of everything by never knowing his own mind for two minutes running, and how we couldn’t now find any sleepers in to-night’s train—when she offered to lend us her car to take us to Monte Carlo! She couldn’t bear the sight of it, she said, for another week at least, and that gives us plenty of time to get there and send it back, doesn’t it? Now fancy your having a sister like that!”
“And how is Napier?” I asked. “I only saw him for a moment....”
“I can tell you,” said Venice in a sudden sombre moment, “that I’m not a bit sorry to be leaving Paris as quick as quick. Naps has been working awfully hard lately, and here we come away for a holiday and the first thing he does is to go off the deep end about this old friend of his being ill.”
“Well, she is rather ill,” I said.
“Yes, I’m awfully sorry, really I am. I’ve never met her, but I saw her once, one night at the Loyalty just before my——”
“Yes, I remember, Venice.”
“And I thought she was the most lovely woman I’d ever seen, and rather sad-looking, which made her lovelier than ever. She’d be sad, I suppose, because of her two husbands and the things people say about her; for they do say some things, don’t they?”