"Optimism, yes, but not naturalness. The approved sort of optimism consists in unendingly predicting victory, with the jaw of a tigress, and in determinedly transforming all bad news into a presage of success. But those who maintain a quiet confidence without talking about it, and make life around them more pleasant by their usual good temper, are suspected of indifference."
"And in all this, what about you, Simone?"
"Me? I have a husband deep in government councils, haven't I? It is a power in these days. People leave me alone."
"And Germaine?" asked Odette.
Simone appeared somewhat embarrassed. People hardly dared to talk of Germaine Le Gault. Germaine Le Gault had lost her husband at about the same time with Odette, and almost under the same circumstances. Like Odette, Germaine adored her husband. Germaine had taken the loss even more deeply to heart than Odette; her life had even been in danger. Germaine, like Odette, still wore her deep widow's mourning. And Germaine was now in love; in love beyond the possibility of concealment, in love with a head physician in whose service she had worked. He was a married man and a father.
"La Villaumer insists," said Simone, "that in her case it is simply a lack of imagination, and that no one should blame her. He says, you understand, that she is unable to bring before herself, as you do, for example, a vision of her husband. If she had been capable of bearing about with her a persistent picture of him, she would have been faithful, if it were only to a picture; but she has no imagination; it is necessary to her that her mind should rest upon an object. It is one explanation—probably a paradox."
At that moment they heard in the neighboring apartment the playing of an excellent pianist which had formerly lulled the reveries of Odette when she was waiting for Jean. That neighboring apartment, into which the Jacquelins had never set foot, was separated from theirs only by a thin partition and a door. The music had often fretted Jean, but when Odette was alone she had loved to hear it.
"Listen!" said Odette. "Oh, it is more than eighteen months since I have heard music!"
"That is so," said Simone; "in Paris one finds a little of everything that one used to love; it is that that hurts."
"What is she playing?" asked Simone after a moment.