‘But I don’t understand . . .’
‘You must trust me, Martin.’ And now she heard herself speaking very gravely: ‘Would you trust me enough to do anything I asked, even although it seemed rather strange? Would you trust me if I said that I asked it for Mary, for her happiness?’
His fingers tightened: ‘Before God, yes. You know that I’d trust you!’
‘Very well then, don’t leave Paris—not now.’
‘You really want me to stay on, Stephen?’
‘Yes, I can’t explain.’
He hesitated, then he suddenly seemed to come to a decision: ‘All right . . . I’ll do whatever you ask me.’
They paid for their coffee and got up to leave: ‘Let me come as far as the house,’ he pleaded.
But she shook her head: ‘No, no, not now. I’ll write to you . . . very soon . . . Good-bye, Martin.’
She watched him hurrying down the street, and when he was finally lost in its shadows, she turned slowly and made her own way up the hill, past the garish lights of the Moulin de la Galette. Its pitiful sails revolved in the wind, eternally grinding out petty sins—dry chaff blown in from the gutters of Paris. And after a while, having breasted the hill, she must climb a dusty flight of stone steps, and push open a heavy, slow-moving door; the door of the mighty temple of faith that keeps its anxious but tireless vigil.