“Coffee. Your coffee?”
The tired yet happy note in his voice touched her. She had been thinking a great deal about Paul while she was watching the stove grow red and waiting for the sound of his return. In all her experience of life—and a woman can see an abundance of life in a little French café—Manon had never met a personality quite like Paul’s. This little widow knew men through and through, yet Brent had puzzled her until that moment when he had sat astride the roof of the hut and betrayed the sensitive prudery of a sentimentalist. She liked him none the less for that, though it added to the complexity of the adventure. Manon was not a prude, and Paul was not a Frenchman. She realized the significance of the fact, nor did the possible unexpectedness of this man’s romantic boyishness bore her. She was piqued by it. Most men are so obvious.
She had a meal ready for this tired man of hers, a man whose body had performed a tour-de-force, and whose happy weariness was ready to eat, drink, light its pipe and relax before the fire. Manon was glad of Brent’s tiredness, even as she was glad of his strength. She wanted him in that mood of happy relaxation. She saw the white stones of the cellar’s vault bright with candle light and the glow from the stove. The water bubbled contentedly in the saucepan. The arm-chair from the école stood embracing the warmth from the fire. And Manon was sensitively alert to the impression that the homeliness of the place would make on Paul. She had been busy here, exerting a woman’s forethought, not for purely selfish ends, but because a woman’s shrewdness may become involved in the things that she does for a particular man.
“You have earned that chair.”
He took it, after protesting that it should be hers. She saw him lie back and melt into enjoyment of this atmosphere of simple comfort.
“I say—this is good.”
His eyes wandered—and then fell to watching Manon, Manon whose hands were busy in his service. He became aware of the pleasantness of Manon, and that it was good to look at her, good to feel her near. As she leant forward over the stove to fill the coffee-pot Paul noticed the brown depths of her eyes, the shadowy curves of her nostrils, the pretty line of her mouth, her frank forehead, and the white fulness of her throat and chin. He observed a little brown freckle rather quaintly placed in the centre of her left lower eyelid. Her hands were plump and strong, with straight, well-formed fingers; generous, capable hands. He was aware, too, of a perfume, a personal aroma that was subtle and wholly French.
“Voilà!”
She drew the table close to the stove.
“How is that?”