."

"He sounds charming to live with."

"Ah, yes. That is it. He is charming. One cannot bear it. To have the
five-finger exercises of his irresistibility played on one. To be the
stiff piano on which he practises but never plays. It is too much. And
one remembers the days when one was the concert grand. Pouf. It is not
agreeable."

There was a pause. Maurice knew that she was going to say a great many
other things.

But they had reached the Hotel Bungalow. Regretfully they parted.

He thought that she was a very remarkable woman indeed.

She thought how like her husband he was. Her husband twenty-five years
ago.

At dinner she still was in black and white. Black covered with filmy
laces, soft and shadowy and mysterious. After dinner they sat on the
terrace and looked out at the inky relentless sea.

"Being sensible is no good at all," she said with sudden passion.
"Courage is the only helpful virtue; when I married I was young and very
pretty and I had thought about life a lot. I knew that in men fidelity
had the importance that they gave to it. To a few--very few--it
matters--but in most cases unfaithfulness is not a psychological thing
at all; it is simply a temporary excess like getting drunk--squalid, if
you like--but not touching your real relationships. Women bluff a lot on
the subject and many are fools. They believe in the same law for both
sexes. It is a ridiculous fallacy. Only Edmond was different. He loved
women--_psychologically_. He was therefore inconstant, which is the real
sin against marriage. He was a great lover, an artist. Every woman was
to him what a canvas is to a painter, a violin to a violinist. The
colours and the sounds he got were marvellous. Sometimes he would try
impossible subjects--for fun--but always he could bring some sort of
harmony out of everything. Ma foi, it amuses me to watch him now--now
that it is difficult, and he is fifty-six and I don't love him--but
then, when everything was easy and he was twenty-seven and I cared--then
it was--well, it was different."

The way that her voice opened and shut reminded him of a sea anemone.

"It is not the way to talk to a stranger, is it?" she said abruptly,
"but I feel as if I had known you for a long time. For twenty-five
years, to be exact," she added.

Maurice felt curiously tongue-tied. He longed to tell her about Marthe.
For the first time in his life he was finding a confidence difficult to
make. He wondered why.

"