Bertram was astonished, yet a sense of relief came to him at the news. It was better for Susan to be in Paris than in Dublin. Safer. But how to find her? Kenneth could give no clue, and Bertram, having come to Paris to find Joyce, was in the strange case of a man who had missed his wife and lost a sister.
He accepted Kenneth’s invitation to dinner because of that loneliness, and sense of futility, but he hadn’t left the Embassy more than half an hour when, by a fluke of chance, he came face to face with Susan in the Place de la Concorde. She was just entering the “Metro” when he saw her, and grabbed her arm.
“Susan! What luck to find you!”
The last time he had met her came back to his mind in a flash—that day in Sackville Street, when her hair was unkempt and her eyes were red and wild, and her frock was wet and muddy after an all-night vigil. Now she was neat and pretty again, but the memory of that night had not passed from her face. In her eyes was still something of its pain.
“Hullo, Bertram!” she said, as simply and unemotionally as though they had left each other only an hour ago. As he drew her on one side to avoid the stream of people pouring into the Underground station, she showed sufficient interest in his way of life to ask what he was doing in Paris. He answered her vaguely, and asked the same question.
“What are you doing?”
She, too, was vague, and said something about propaganda work, for Ireland. The French were sympathetic. They believed in Liberty, and they hated England, she was glad to say.
“They don’t seem to like us,” said Bertram, sadly, but he didn’t argue with that “glad to say.”
“When can I have a real talk with you, and where?”
She gave her address, at a number in the rue de la Pompe, Passy, and told him that she was living with Betty O’Brien, who, like herself, had abandoned England since Dennis’s martyrdom. Betty was staying with her uncle, Mr. Mahony. Any time after nine he would find a little crowd in their rooms. Irish exiles, French Liberals, Russian Communists, some of the people in France who most loved Liberty.