He was on the point of telling her all about it, and to explain to her that it was a question of examining some very attractive offers from an American combine with a view to establishing wireless communication with Asia Minor and even Persia. But, perhaps in order to intrigue Irene—believing her to be as jealous as he was—perhaps, even though she was discretion itself, in order that no word of the matter should leak out, he said nothing.
That evening, seized with remorse, he took up the tale where he had left it in the morning.
"I hadn't time to explain. I invited two American bankers to luncheon. They have just come from London ..."
"Isn't it about the wireless in Asia Minor?" interrupted Irene. "Be very careful; your people have not, as they pretend, got the Marconi Company behind them. They came to me with it a week ago and I made some inquiries. It is not a serious proposition."
In less time than one could imagine the intercourse between them began to lose sincerity. On Irene's side it was because she felt that her husband was drifting away from her. On Lewis' side it was because at every turn he found her to be his master. He had the impression of continuing a struggle against an intimate and skilful adversary who had made him bite the dust at their first encounter. That enterprise of the San Lucido mines which had brought them together by separating them, and of which a few months earlier Lewis could not think without emotion because it had been the origin of his happiness, now humiliated him as it prospered more and more: he found himself loathing it when he read that it was entering on its second financial year, that the profits had been most satisfactory and that there was quite a possibility of a dividend being declared.
He remembered on that occasion that it was the anniversary of their meeting in Sicily. He promised himself that he would take Irene some of the pungent and intoxicating jasmin of that first evening.
[IX]
THE afternoon on which Lewis went to his florist to order the jasmin, chance, our worst enemy, brought Madame Magnac there, too. One cannot live in the closest intimacy with anyone for several years without acquiring a certain number of tradesmen in common. Elsie! In a flash she became again the plenipotentiary of pleasure, the woman at the same time stately and ludicrous, as elegant and up to date as ever; and everything else that Lewis wanted Irene to be, and which she was not. He stopped thinking that a legal wife is sufficient to console a man for all his mistresses. He felt that Elsie had become necessary to him again. Between them there was no question of quarreling, of separation, of points of honour or of equity. With the true spirit of worldliness and tact, Madame Magnac spoke to him as though she were continuing a conversation interrupted by chance the day before.
"Above all, don't come at the apéritif hour if it bores you, though you'll always be most welcome.... News? Marbot is in bed with his hind-quarters full of buck shot. Harbedjan put them into him a fortnight ago at Sologne. If the Armenians start massacring ..."
The florist's assistant interrupted them. She had been unable to get jasmin anywhere.