“Yes, I believe you.”
Huckaby bowed. “I thank you, Mrs. Fontaine. And as we are on this painful subject, I should like to be frank with you. You know how this thing started. I began it in the first place as a joke, a wild jest, to humour him in his madness. The idea of Quixtus breaking a woman’s heart is comic. But—God knows how—it developed into our—our association. The important part now is this—if you think you have been fooling him to the top of his bent, you’re mistaken. When it came to the point of beginning his heart-breaking career, he shied at it. Told me the whole thing was profoundly distasteful and I must never mention the matter again.”
“Well?” asked Mrs. Fontaine, “what does that mean?”
“It means,” said Huckaby, “that you’ve succeeded in making him fond of your society, for its own sake.”
She drew a deep breath. “Thank goodness, this nightmare of a farce is over.”
“Now, I suppose you’ll go back to London,” said Huckaby.
She looked away from him, unseeing, down the long lounge, and her gloved hands unconsciously gripped each other hard; her bosom heaved. In the woman’s dark soul strange things were happening, a curious, desperate hope was dawning. She remained like this for a few moments while Huckaby, unconscious of tensity, selected and lit a cigarette.
“No, I shan’t go to London,” she said at last, without turning her head. “I’ll stay in Paris. I owe myself a holiday.”
Ten minutes afterwards Quixtus had gone. They watched the wheels of the taxi that was carrying him to the Lyons station disappear beneath the great archway, and, with something like a sigh, they returned slowly to the lounge. Lena Fontaine threw herself on a seat, her hands by her side, in an attitude of weariness.
“Oh God, I’m tired,” she whispered.