JASMINE

HARVEST

Jane Arbor
Caroline Neville doubted the wisdom of her Aunt Clio’s request for her to go
without delay to the South of France and keep an eye on her cousin Betsy, on
holiday there. But Aunt Clio was convinced that her daughter had fallen into the
clutches of a Riviera playboy.

Caroline arrived in Cannes to find that her aunt’s conjectures were only too true.
Betsy was head over heels in love with the local charmer, Paul Pascal—and
Caroline, remembering her own past experience of heartless charmers, was
grimly determined to save her cousin from the same heartbreak.

And then Caroline realized, with sudden awful clarity, that she too was falling
under Paul’s spell...

CHAPTER ONE

“Caroline, dear! So good of you to come at such short notice and in this awful
weather! Come along in, do. You can’t think how glad I am to see you. Nor
imagine the relief it was when I suddenly thought, Why of course—there’s
always Caroline! and rang you and you promised to come—”

Mrs. Lane, who had opened to her niece’s knock with a promptitude which
suggested she had been waiting behind the door, now closed it on the storm-
racked July evening and led the way into a sitting-room where shrouded
furniture, empty flower vases and closed curtains all bore out the evidence of
the labelled air-luggage which was stacked in the hall.

Not that the Lanes’ imminent departure for America was news to Caroline. For
at this season every year her Uncle Ralph, the self-made and wealthy Chairman
of Biftek Canning, would take off for some far-flung city where he and his
fellow meat packers of the free world would attend the earnest conclaves
described irreverently by his daughter Betsy as “Daddy’s Get-Togethers with the
Potted Tongues”, and Aunt Clio would go along on his expense account for the
ride.

Two years ago it had been Buenos Aires. Last summer, Rio de Janeiro. This
time it was to be Chicago, as Caroline had learned when, a week back, she had
been bidden to the smart mews house in order to view the battery of Top Twelve
clothes with which her aunt intended to assault America. But not expecting to
see either of them again before they left England, Caroline had wished them bon
voyage then and so had been caught unprepared by today’s urgent summons
which had brought her beating up from Sidcup in a thunderstorm and by the first
available train.

Earlier, calling her digs by telephone, Aunt Clio, never as mentally poised as
she looked, had been even more staccato and cryptic than in her welcome at the
door.

“Caroline?” she had queried. “Yes, dear—Aunt Clio here. Can you get up to
see me? ... No, dear, tomorrow won’t do. We’re flying out in the morning. So it
must be today ... Yes, as soon as you can make it and before Ralph is due home
... You will? Oh, bless you, dear. Not, I beg you, later than six for safety, and I’ll
be expecting you.” But when she had poured sherry for Caroline from the lone
bottle on view—“No choice of drinks, to offer you, dear, because Ralph has
already closed the cellar and I didn’t want him to know I was going to ring
you”—the story came out, dramatized to the hilt as, in Caroline’s experience,
her aunt’s personal problems always were before they were solved. Usually by
someone else, for what little Aunt Clio did not know about the art of appeal
could be written on a postage stamp with margins to spare.

Hands expressive, brown velvet eyes wide, she breathed, “You’re going to
agree that this is quite too awful, dear. It’s Betsy, you see—You knew, didn’t
you, that we had let her go to the South of France with those friends of hers, the
Drages?”

Caroline nodded. “Yes, and weren’t they going on to tour Italy afterwards?”

“They were. The Drages had taken this villa between Cannes and Grasse for a
month, and that would have been up a day or two ago, I calculate. But when we
last heard from them about a week back—a picture-postcard of the Croisette
from Ann and a comic one from Tom Drage for Ralph—there wasn’t a whisper,
not a breath then of all this!”

“Of all which?”

“Why, this about Tom and Ann having to go off to Italy without Betsy because
she had flatly refused to go with them. They’ve gone. She has stayed on in the
villa. Alone! Well, except for the maid they had. What do you make of that?”

Caroline “made” of it in silence for a minute. Then she objected, “How could
Betsy have stayed on in the villa? Down there at this time of year, aren’t the
next tenants panting to move in as soon as the previous ones move out?”
 “Ah, but it wasn’t that kind of villa. I mean, not the sort they advertise in the
Sunday papers. Or so the Drages said. It’s on some private estate, a flower-farm
or something. Grasse, you know. Perfume-making and all that—” Mrs. Lane’s
gesture was vague—“and the Drages were able to rent it through French friends
of friends of theirs. So Betsy must have persuaded someone to let her keep it on,
and if she says she is still there, I imagine she is.”

Caroline accepted the argument. “I suppose so,” she agreed. “But if when you
last heard, the Drages were still there too, how do you know they’re not any
longer and that Betsy is?”

“Dear—I told you! A week ago was when we heard from Tom and Anne. But
Betsy herself telephoned this morning—thank goodness Ralph had gone to the
office!—to say she had made the other two go on to Italy without her because
she wanted to stay where she was. It was quite all right; everything had been
arranged; she was O.K. for money and the Drages would pick her up as they
came back. She was fine; riotously happy and everything was in glorious
Technicolor. Love to Daddy and me and God bless for our trip. See us soon—
See us soon, indeed! Believe it or not, Caroline, she would have rung off then if
I hadn’t ordered her to reverse the charges and stay on the line until she had
explained herself better than that!”

“I should have thought the explanations were due from the Drages.”
Caroline’s tone was dry. “Do you mean they folded their tents and silently stole
away, abandoning Betsy just like that, without a word to you or to Uncle
Ralph?”

Mrs. Lane puckered a brow. “Tents, dear? They weren’t camping ... Oh, you
were quoting! I see what you mean, and of course it was naughty of them, even
though there was a letter from them by the second post.”

“Saying what?”

“Well, that Betsy had refused to budge, but hadn’t sprung it on them till the
last minute. That they had had no choice but to go, because they had a tight
timetable, meeting up with other people. But as they didn’t sound too worried or
seem to think we should be, I’m afraid Betsy must have let them think she had
our blessing or could get it. You know what a little wheedler the child is when
she likes! And on the phone she had said as much herself—that we musn’t
blame Tom and Ann, because it wasn’t their fault.”

“And what did you say to her on the phone?” Caroline asked.

“What could I say? After all, she is of age, even if only just. Besides, for the
whole of the two months or more that we’re to be away, we’re lending the house
to some friends of our hosts in Chicago, who’re crazy to live in a mews because
I believe they think we throw parties in loose-boxes and whinny to our
neighbors over half-doors! So that even if I had ordered Betsy home, there’d be
nowhere for her to come home to, don’t you see?”

“And do I gather, Aunt Clio, that you haven’t told Uncle Ralph any of this
yet?”

The soft brown eyes rounded. “Dear, I daren’t! Oh, of course he’ll have to
know, but not, if I can help it, until after we have flown out tomorrow. Because
he might refuse to go. In fact he would be almost sure to, and he must go. This
year he is to be President of the Convention, and anyway, when you are married
yourself, Caroline, you’ll learn that one does have to edit things for husbands,
especially where their daughters and men are concerned.”

Surprise jerked up Caroline’s chin. “Men? Are we talking about Betsy and
men?”

“Not men, dear. But obviously it’s a man. The attraction which is keeping her
on the Riviera, I mean.”

“Did she say so?”

“Well, not in so many words, though I’m sure she would have admitted it if I
had pressed her. But I didn’t, because in my experience the fewer awkward facts
you know, the better, when a man like Ralph begins to ask questions—”
 “But I thought,” Caroline cut in, “that Betsy was as good as engaged to that
rather solemn young buyer of Uncle Ralph’s, Edward Brant?”

“So she is. It’s not quite official, though the idea is it will be as soon as he gets
back from the Argentine, where he is on his first big buying commission. Beef
on the hoof, you know ... I like him very much, and Ralph, who used to call him
‘a promising lad’, now says he is ‘a coming man’, which from Ralph is high
praise. But you do see how Edward complicates all this, poor boy? He’s crazy
about Betsy, and I just did not know how I was ever to hint to Ralph that she
might be thinking of jilting him for some Riviera playboy until, as I told you, I
realized how you could help if you would. That in fact you could solve the
whole thing.”

“I could? How?” asked Caroline warily.

“Don’t you see? By your going down to join Betsy at the villa, of course. If
possible, before I need to tell Ralph. So that when I do, you would be there,
which ought to satisfy him. And you could go, couldn’t you, seeing that for
quite some time now you’ve been out of a job?”

Caroline demurred mildly, “Only if you call three weeks ‘quite some time’—
and I’m not exactly on the breadline yet. It’s simply that I’m being rather choosy
this time, looking for something where I can use my still fairly good French for
more than the odd export letter I’ve been called on to write or to translate at
Gainham’s—”

“Well, here is something, dear! Not a real job, of course. More of a holiday
with a fine chance to practice your French if that’s what you want. And if you
would go—why, look how it works out! I needn’t even tell Ralph I’ve been in
touch with Betsy. The news could come from you or her by cable or letter to us
in Chicago that when the Drages had suddenly had to change to plans which
couldn’t include Betsy, they had arranged for her to keep on the villa and on the
spur of the moment and without wanting to worry us just as we were leaving,
she had begged you to join her and you had agreed. How’s that?”

“It isn’t,” quashed Caroline. “At least, not at that speed, Aunt Clio.”
 “But it could be, dear. If you could get away, say tomorrow, and could book a
seat on a Comet, it only takes ninety minutes to fly to Nice, didn’t you know?
And you would be flying, of course. At my expense, just as I would make it
right with your landlady for your room rental and give you the same allowance
in traveller’s cheques as the Government says we may give Betsy. You’d let me
do all that, I hope?”

“I most certainly would not!”

“Oh, Caroline—you mean you won’t go?”

“I didn’t say so. But tomorrow is too short notice, and for the rest, my
arrangement with Mrs. White is that she is free to let my room whenever I’m
away, and as I haven’t had a holiday yet this year I’m well in funds, though
thank you all the same, Aunt Clio dear. Besides, if I do go I should be staying at
the villa rent-free, and I admit I had thought of giving myself a few weeks in
France, rubbing up my French before I went seriously for a job where it needn’t
get rusty again.”

Mrs. Lane’s answer to that was a dramatic swoop and a hug which jeopardized
Caroline’s sherry. “Then you will go, bless you? When? When, so that I can wire
Betsy and we can book your air passage straight away?” she bubbled.

But Caroline was firm that she would not fly. Her original vague plan had
envisaged visiting Paris for nostalgia’s sake, and it was from Paris that she
would go south in her own fashion, though now, she promised, after only a day’s
stay instead of longer.

“And when I get to—what’s the name of the place?” she asked.

“The Villa Mimosa, Prairies Pascal, Villon-Sur-Siagne. But I’ll tell Betsy to
meet you at Cannes.”

“Well, then what am I to say to or do with her? If you’re right and she is
tangled up with a man, am I supposed to try to prise her free of him? And if I
can, do I bundle her off to join the Drages or what?”
 Mrs. Lane bit her lip. “I don’t know. I’m afraid Betsy is like me—she can be
led but she won’t be driven, and if she means to stay there, she will. So perhaps
all you can do may be to remind her that she is, after all, practically engaged to
Edward and then to use your influence with her. Your experience too, because
it’s really that which makes you the very best person to help my little girl. I
mean, you do know what infatuation is, and you put that rather unfortunate
affair behind you so sensibly when it ended ... In fact, I’m always saying to
Ralph how very balanced you’ve been about men ever since!”

“Thanks,” said Caroline, so curtly that she earned an alarmed glance from her
aunt.

“Dear, I haven’t said the wrong thing, have I? You have got over that
wretched, irresponsible creature, haven’t you? Let’s see, how long is it now
since he let you down as he did?”

Still crisply, Caroline said, “About two years. But you’ve dropped no bricks.
I’m entirely ‘over’ Roy Sanders, and we never were really each other’s type. It
was simply that at the time I hated his having found it out before I did.”

“He could still have been kinder about letting you know it! Didn’t Betsy tell
me you had a date with him the very night he rang you up to say he was leaving
the country for good? And did, without giving you a chance to see him again?”

“Yes. But if he hadn’t gone then and that way, he probably would have done
later, when it might have hurt a good deal more. And after all, are there any kind
ways of breaking off a love-affair while one person is still involved?” Making a
rhetorical question of it, Caroline put down her glass and rose. “Well, if that’s
all, Aunt Clio, and you don’t want me to meet Uncle, I think I’d better go,
hadn’t I?”

“If you say so, dear, and why, yes it is after six. And before Ralph comes in I
must get through to Betsy again to tell her you’re coming and that you’ll let her
know when to meet you at Cannes. Stay while I do it, if you like, dear. Or no,
perhaps you’d better not, in case Ralph should happen to arrive—” And on the
tide of her aunt’s nervous fear of discovery of her well-meant intrigue Caroline
was ushered out.

Three nights later the station dock of the Gare de Lyon was showing only a
minute to eight as Caroline dashed for the barrier between her and the train,
noisily panting its determination to leave on time on its journey south.

At the barrier the inspector snatched at her ticket and seat-voucher, then thrust
them back into her hand. “Dépechez-vous, Madame—vous êtes bien en retard!”
As if she needed to be told to hurry and that she was late! thought Caroline. And
then—“Voiture Quatre, Madame,” followed by something she did not catch,
being already away down the platform, her case banging awkwardly against her
legs as she ran.

She obediently counted coaches—One, Two, Three—Heavens! Number Four

was not in sequence. After Three came a luggage-van, then a restaurant car,
softly lighted and welcoming, but not the coach she sought. By the time she
reached it, identifying it by the big “4” on its panels, doors were slamming all
along the train and in the coach corridor there was only one belated porter to
whom she could appeal for help in finding her couchette.

His response was impatient. He frowned over her seat-voucher as if puzzled

by it, then with a “Par la” and a vague wave of his hand he directed her to a
compartment of which the door stood ajar. He pocketed her tip and jumped
down to the platform as the train gave a final warning shudder and began to
move. Meanwhile every other occupant of the coach seemed to be standing in
the corridor, and it was not until Caroline had snaked her way through them and
reached the compartment that she realized it was almost certainly not hers.

For one thing, it was not of couchette type. It was a luxurious single berth as,
she now remembered having noticed, were all its neighbors. And for another,
though its owner was absent, there was ample evidence of his occupation in the
assortment of male bric-a-brac and a copy of Paris Match on the table and in the
cream pigskin valise on the rack.

Yet wasn’t this coach the “Voiture Quatre” of the ticket inspector’s direction
and the number on this door Six, corresponding to her seat-voucher? Oh well,
thought Caroline, whatever the mistake, it was not hers. It could be sorted out
when the coach attendant came along, and until he did, as long as she contrived
to look like a bird of passage, there was probably no harm in sitting down where
she was instead of rejoining the press of people still standing about in the
corridor even after all the farewells had been said.

She was blissfully tired at the end of this day spent in rediscovering “her”
Paris—the one she and Daddy had shared—after ten years’ absence from it, and
much of her pilgrimage had been on foot. Booking out from the hotel where she
had spent the night after crossing from England, she had first taken her case to
the Gare de Lyon and then boarded a bus in search of the street of tall, balconied
houses where she had spent three happy years which she remembered in false
retrospect as a whole era of her youth.

But she had not gone into Number Ten where their flat had been. It looked
shabbier than she recalled it and she did not want to break her dream of its
gracious if slightly passé interior. Besides, it had a new concierge who would
not know her. Instead she had walked on to the lycée where at first she had been
badly homesick for a familiar English classroom but to which she had switched
all her loyalty once she had learned to chatter in French as readily as in her own
tongue.

There, though school had broken up for the summer, a caretaker—also new
since her time—had allowed her to wander round the building while he did his
cleaning. She had found the last classroom she had occupied; sat in “her” desk,
(whose was it now?) and identified the cloakroom hook where her coat and
beret and satchel used to hang. Then she had re-explored the neighboring public
gardens and at noon had gone for déjeuner to Le Chat Gris where, to her delight,
she found herself not only remembered but welcome, almost feted.

“So! La petite Neville! After so long a time absent!” Pere Chaussin, aproned
and beaming, had opened ecstatic arms to her and so had Mère Chaussin,
pressing Caroline to her ample frontage while showering questions over her
head.

“And the good Monsieur Neville—he is with you, no? What—dead two
years? Hélas, this brief life! But that makes you orpheline—you already had no
mother living, one recalls? And you, Mademoiselle—you are not married? Nor
fiancée! On holiday in Paris? Passing through? Or returned to us perhaps for
good?”

But before Caroline had satisfied their curiosity a bottle of wine had had to be
opened. Then she must lunch at their invitation and expense. No, no demur!
This was an occasion! Here at the staff table, screened from the other patrons,
they would all eat together—pâté de maison, omelette aux fines herbes,
escalopes de veau—and over the meal she should hear their news and must tell
hers.

Their memory of Caroline and her father had needed little refreshing.

But yes—understood! Monsieur Neville had come to Paris as the branch

manager of an English tourist agency and after three years had returned to good
promotion in London. Meanwhile Mademoiselle had been a pupil at the Lycée
Scarron—no? So plump and bouncing a child she had been, yet how slim and
chic now! Regard then the grey eyes, the silver-fair hair, the palely flushed skin
that was so English, and remember that gesture, will you? There—that thrust of
the forefinger lifting the wing of hair from the brow! Always, but always she
made it when she was excited or pleased, and now that we are so happy to see
her again—look, she does it now!

Thus Pere and Mère Chaussin in turns before Caroline brought her personal
story up to date. They clucked with sympathy over her father’s sudden death on
the evening of her twenty-first birthday and extracted her promise that on her
return, however, indefinite, from her present errand she would spend longer in
Paris than she planned to do now.

It was not until mid-afternoon that the meal had ended and she had gone on to
make some briefer calls on places and people they insisted she must see again.
Then she had gone shopping for a present for each of them and, returning to Le
Chat Gris, had found herself the centre of interest for as many more mutual
friends as the Chaussins had managed to collect during her absence.
 Later still—“An revoir! An revoir!” had echoed after her taxi as its driver
accepted the challenge of doing the cross-city journey to the Gare de Lyon in
fifteen minutes if she were to catch the train at eight. But he made it and so had
she, thank goodness, and she knew she would not have missed the day’s
heartwarming experience for worlds.

How kind French people were—leaping to congratulate you on the most

halting command of their language and praising your “chic” to the skies if you
looked only ordinarily neat! Which reminded her—she could do with some
freshening as soon as her right to this compartment or some other was settled,
and meanwhile she saw no reason why she shouldn’t use the mirror opposite for
doing some running repairs...

But as she stood up the train took some particularly vicious points; caught off-
balance, Caroline hurtled first towards the table, then towards the open door
where, missing her grip on the jamb, she would have plunged into the corridor if
a man’s hands had not steadied her—and lingered on her upper arms a fraction
longer than was necessary.

She looked up—quite a long way up—into a lean, tanned face, meeting eyes
that held a hint of controlled devilment beneath oddly crooked brows some
shades darker than the hair. Still breathless and not knowing if she were
choosing the right language, ‘I—I do beg your pardon, Monsieur,” she said in
French.

“Thinking nothing of it, Mademoiselle. A pleasure, believe me!” The words

were conventional enough. It was the smile that went with them which seemed
to underline the opportunism of the hold which had lasted just too long, and
instinctively Caroline froze as she stepped back into the compartment.

But after a second’s hesitation and a glance at the number on the door, her
rescuer was inside it too—and so was the debonair smile, easy and very sure of
its charm. Rocking slightly on his heels to the train’s movement, he asked, “Is
there anything else I can do for you, Mademoiselle? If so—enchanted, believe
me!”
 “Nothing, thank you, Monsieur. Nothing more, that is—”

He was looking at her case, standing on the seat. “You were on your way to
your own reservation, no doubt, when that lurch of the train threw you against
the door?”

He must have known she hadn’t been carrying her case and that she had been
inside the compartment, not passing by! She said, “No, I was on my feet in here
and lost my balance. I—” But there it occurred to her that as he seemed to
assume he had a right to be where he was, then he must think she hadn’t. Giving
his brash assurance the benefit of the doubt, she went on,

“These things, Monsieur—” indicating the oddments on the table and

implying the valise on the rack—“they’re not yours, by any chance?”

His glance followed hers. “Mine, yes. Guilty, I’m afraid.” The smile widened
to a grin for which the only description was impish. ‘May I take it then,
Mademoiselle, that if you were in here, you had been offended by the litter as
you passed, and had dropped in to tidy it up?”

Thrust by his raillery on to an offensive she hadn’t meant to take, Caroline

retorted, “Of course not. But if they are yours, I’m afraid there has been some
mistake.”

“What kind of a mistake?” he inquired conversationally. “And whose? Tell me

—yours? Or mine?”

Less sure of her ground than she hoped she sounded, Caroline said, ‘That
remains to be seen. But as my reservation is for Coach Four, Compartment Six,
the mistake could be yours or your travel agent’s, Monsieur.”

“Even if my reservation is for Compartment Six, Coach Four?”

“It can’t very well be, can it, if mine is?”

 ‘Ah, but it could be, if yours is something different. Equally it could be,
supposing you hadn’t troubled to make a reservation at all and were relying on
your charm and my chivalry to get you a place!”

Outraged, Caroline blanched. “How dare you suggest such a thing?” she
demanded. “And as if anyone would dream of travelling for—for eleven hours
by night without reserving a berth!”

‘Eleven hours?” Head cocked, he appeared to calculate her probable

destination. Aloud he said smoothly, “It has—happened, when trains must be
caught at the last moment. And you see, Mademoiselle, it didn’t escape my
notice from the window of the bar that your canter down the platform was
perilously close to zero-hour!”

Almost speechless with chagrin at the thought of the figure of fun she and her
bumping case must have cut, Caroline said frostily, “And of course you couldn’t
know I was directed here by a porter as well as by the ticket inspector after they
had both looked at my voucher? If you don’t believe me—”

But as she opened her handbag in search of her wallet, someone else—the
coach attendant—was in the doorway, and from the nod the two men
exchanged, clearly they had met earlier.

“You find everything to your liking, Monsieur?”

Eyes on Caroline—“Everything, thank you, so far as I am concerned. It is

Madame here who is not pleased!”

“Madame?” The attendant’s brows knitted. “But ?”

“A slight contretemps, I’m afraid. You see, Madame believes this

compartment to be hers.”

“But no, Monsieur—impossible, that. I myself checked your vouchers when

you boarded. A mistake somewhere. Madame, you would allow me to see your
reservation.”

“Willingly.” Caroline took false confidence when his face cleared after
examining it.

But he addressed her companion, not her. “Ah, simple! Remain just where you
find yourself, Monsieur. It is Madame’s mistake, not yours!”

Caroline protested, “But this is Number Six and the coach is—”

“Number Four, First Class Wagon-Lits, Madame. It is in Coach Four of the

Second Class where you will find your couchette reserved, and one wonders that
you should ever have supposed—”

Too late Caroline remembered the ticket inspector’s warning which she had
not waited to hear. But that porter, knowing she was wrong, simply hadn’t
troubled to put her right! Hoping she did not look as crestfallen as she felt, she
glanced at both men, seeing official disapproval in the one face, quizzical
amusement in the other.

Her chin jerked up. “I’m very sorry. I thought I was properly directed here,”
she said with as much grace as she could muster. They could believe her or not
as they pleased, and though she was tempted to add a trenchant word or two on
the subject of the duplication of coach numbering, she decided there was no
future in prolonging the spectacle of her defeat. But when she reached for her
case she met her fellow passenger’s hand on its handle.

Again that impish grin. “I’m to be forgiven, Mademoiselle, for the awful
crime of being in the right?”

“Of course.” How she loathed him for rubbing it in!

“Then we’ll drink to our ‘pax.’ You must join me in the restaurant bar.”

‘Thank you, Monsieur—but no.” If he had not made a statement of it rather

than an invitation, and if from the first he had not laid on assurance with a
palette knife, she thought she, would have accepted. But as it was she sensed he
would not take “No” unless she spelt it for him, and she was relieved when the
attendant intervened, addressing her companion in rapid undertones. That is, she
was relieved until she caught the gist of the argument...

“A rule of the railway, Monsieur—none of my making.”

“Pff—not to be borne! Even a nationalized railway must have a heart, a sense

of the romantic somewhere!”

“Perhaps, but it is not for me to say. The second class has a restaurant and a
bar of its own, and it is not permitted—”

“Nevertheless, it could be arranged?”

A pause. A shrug. A man-between-man smile spreading over the attendant’s

face. “But yes, it could be—arranged, Monsieur!”

But at the crackle of franc-notes passing from hand to hand Caroline rebelled
in earnest. The—the effrontery of the man—trying to buy for her the doubtful
privilege of spending any more time at all in his company! She addressed him
first. “Please don’t trouble yourself, Monsieur. You should believe I meant my
refusal of your invitation.” Then to the attendant, “Perhaps you’ll show me to
my own place as soon as you are free?”

“Certainly, Madame. At once.” Taking her case, he ushered her ahead of him
into the corridor, but himself indulged a final exchange with the other man.

“A thousand pities, Monsieur. The little matter could have arranged itself with
ease, had Madame shown herself agreeable!”

A maddening chuckle. “If she had been agreeable! And when a lady is not
willing, what should one do next, my friend?”
 “Monsieur is asking me?”

“Monsieur is.”

“Then—nothing, Monsieur. Me, in such a situation, I merely snap the fingers

and reflect that for one who says no there are many who will say yes and that,
like the trains in the Metro, another will be coming along—”

But already, not waiting to hear the reply to that stale quip, Caroline was
stalking away down the corridor, out of earshot of what it might be.

CHAPTER TWO

AS soon as her couchette was made up Caroline had been ready to use it, and
during the night had heard only the noisy stops at Dijon and Lyon. Waking
finally to a misty dawn at Marseille, she dressed and packed her night things,
and from then until she went to the restaurant car for breakfast, sat watching the
towering brown peaks of the Maure massif gradually wheel back and give place
to a coastline and countless tiny bays, pine-fringed and sapphire-floored, and of
as many magic names.

... Le Lavandou ... St. Tropez ... St. Raphael ... Le Trayas ... Miramar ... Too
soon for Caroline, needing time to absorb such prodigality of light and warmth
and color, it was Cannes, and there, a little apart from the crowd on the platform,
was Betsy, searching the length of the train with her eyes as it drew alongside.

Caroline waved and Betsy replied with a lifted thumb of welcome. Owl-eyed
in extravagant dark glasses and on the merest nodding terms with decency in a
sailcloth halter-top and briefs, she looked as “with” her background as a
chameleon. By contrast Caroline felt “new girl” and overdressed in sleeveless
white cotton, and when they met and had exchanged a cousinly kiss, Betsy’s
greeting underlined the superiority lent by her tan of the color and patina of boot
polish.

“Lovely to see you, Caro! But my!”—holding Caroline at arm’s length—“At

home, do we really go about looking quite so wan? You’re going to have to oil
like mad, though it doesn’t take too long to cook, thank goodness. I mean, by
now I’m quite passable, aren’t I?”

“More than!” approved Caroline. “Positively negroid, and I can’t wait to

compete. But I probably can’t, being so much fairer than you to begin with.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Betsy’s tone implied that she could afford to be generous.
“I know I’ve a month’s start on you, but when you blonde characters tan you
usually go a super goldy-brown that knocks ’em in the aisles.” As a porter
snatched Caroline's luggage Betsy added, “You know, Caro, I couldn’t be more
glad to see you. Because, as I knew the parents wouldn’t wear the idea of my
staying on here alone indefinitely, Mummy might have sent almost anyone. So
you can imagine the hoot of sheer relief I gave when she rang to say she had
managed not to tell Daddy yet and that she had asked you to come.”

Caroline said dryly, “Thanks, it’s nice to be regarded as the least of the evils
which might have been wished on you! But though I mightn’t have been so
biddable if I hadn’t been thinking in terms of France for a holiday in any case, it
all worked out. Not, however, that that lets you out, young Betsy, for putting
Aunt Clio on the spot as you did. You must have known how worried she would
be, and what is it all in aid of, anyway?”

Betsy halted on their way down the platform. “Look, Caro, you’re not putting
on a governess act already, are you?” she demanded.

“No, but I do expect to be put in the picture, and so do Aunt Clio and Uncle
Ralph,” Caroling warned.

“Well, you will be,” Betsy allowed reluctantly. “But it’s—quite a story and it
can wait, can’t it? Meanwhile—” she moved on again—“do you really want to
go straight up to the villa, or will you settle for spending the morning down here
and going back around siesta time, when I promise to take down my back hair
and Tell All?”

The emphasis on “really” being a clear indication of Betsy’s wishes in the

matter, Caroline agreed that she would like nothing better than a morning in
Cannes. “What do we use for transport?” she asked.

“Hire-drive bubble car. I kept it on after Tom and Ann left. With three in it,
one of us always had to sit bodkin, but it’s all right for two; it is a bit
temperamental at times, but it’s quite a lamb at skipping up and down hills, and
believe you me, around here it needs to be!”
 They were outside in the station square now; at Betsy’s direction the porter
loaded Caroline’s bags into the tiny car; Caroline tipped him and then Betsy,
taking the driving seat, was waiting for Caroline to join her.

But Caroline lingered, her eyes searching the panorama of the sun-drenched
square—the milling crowds, the porters’ trolleys, the taxis, the cars—for long
enough to rouse Betsy’s impatience to be gone.

“What gives, Caro?” she asked, leaning across and craning her head. “Why the
glassy-eyed stare? Realized you’ve lost your passport? Left something in the
train? If not, what are you looking at? Or for?”

“What ?” Why, nothing. Nothing at all. Just—looking,” said Caroline. But her
fingers had to cross against the white lie, schoolgirl-fashion, as she jack-knifed
into the car.

Betsy’s finishing school had equipped her with most of the social arts and
skills; she drove as well as she danced and rode and swam, and she had taken to
the Continental rule of the road with her usual confidence.

For Caroline’s benefit they first made a tour of the principal shopping streets
and then followed the long curve of the Croisette from the Pointe to the port and
the yacht-basin, where the world’s most leisured shipping, dallying at anchor on
the blue glass floor, was as much a part of the Riviera glamor story as the
Croisette’s palms and canna lilies, its mammoth hotels and luxury boutiques.
And though here the bustle and the nautical noises and the smells might just
possibly have been those of Brixham or Torbay, even the quays seemed to have
been painted as a stage backcloth and to lack only a chorus of fishergirls and
French sailors ready to break into their opening dance routine.

Betsy pointed. “That’s the Yacht Club. Very, very millionaire and chi-chi, but
we shall get asked there for drinks by people. Tom and Ann knew crowds, and
I’ve inherited their set.”

“French or English?”
 “Both, and here and there a dash of American, though mostly French. And
that’s another blessing about you, Caro—your French is going to be a help,
considering that mine is just about Fourth Form. Since Tom and Ann went, I’ve
been communicating with Marie, our help at the villa, in sign language, and at
parties it’s so galling not to be grasping the gist and even having to miss out on
the nice things Frenchmen manage to say without sounding as if paying a
compliment hurt! But look—if you’ve seen all you want for now, shall we go
back and catch a swim and a sunbathe at Bar Soleil before we go somewhere for
lunch?”

An hour later Caroline had had her first swim in the Mediterranean and both in
the water and on the sands had been introduced to as many of Betsy’s cronies as
had also elected to foregather at the Bar Soleil that morning. When they had
dressed and were leaving the beach Betsy commented, “Everyone wants to be
seen at Soleil just now; ten days or so ago it had to be Journée d’Or and next
week or next month it could be Pic-Nic or La Grotte. Actually it couldn’t matter
less. They all have identical juke-boxes and Coca-Cola signs and they all charge
the earth for their dressing cubicles and those slatted sunbathing things
—caillebots, aren’t they called?”

Caroline said, “Caillebotis, I think. A caillebot is a guelder rose. Where are

we going for lunch?”

“To another of the places where the world and his wife have to be seen this
week, if not last or next, and the odd thing about this one is that it isn’t even
madly expensive—yet,” Betsy told her.

The restaurant in question, called simply Bel-Ami, faced a comparatively

quiet square behind the Croisette. Its outdoor tables were placed beneath its
frontage of foot-thick arches, the cool shade of which was so welcome that they
elected to lunch there rather than inside.

They ordered a vegetable soup with an elusive flavor which Caroline believed
must be basil, a pissaladière, a pizza-like open tart of onions and anchovies, and
candied fruits to follow. While they ate, the square filled up with cars, and
Betsy, sometimes with the prompting of their friendly table waiter, identified for
Caroline a number of the celebrities—film stars of both sexes, a best-selling
novelist, a colored singer still in her teens but already with a top-bracket income
—who alighted from the cars and made for Bel-Ami, There were others whom
Betsy did not know and lesser mortals to whom she called out or waggled her
fingers in greeting. It was when they were drinking their coffee that she uttered
a small “Tch” of annoyance, and Caroline looked up to notice the woman who
was crossing the pavement, followed by a paunchy middle-aged man.

Betsy muttered, “Ariane Lescure—might have known she’d show up sooner

or later!” But she was ready with a thin smile and a laconic “Lo, Ariane!” by the
time the newcomer was threading her way to their table, leaving her companion
standing.

Ariane Lescure—whoever she was—was older than either of the girls; in her
early thirties, judged Caroline, whose further impressions were of a heady
perfume, the slimmest of figures in a black open-necked shirt and knee-buttoned
pantalons; of auburn hair in sculptured layers and a speaking voice with the
quality of thick, dark honey.

“Betsy, ma petite!” She went on in English, attractively accented. “You

naughty child, you should have told me you were without an escort for luncheon
and I’d have seen that you had one or rather two. One for you, one for—” But as
her glance included Caroline a finger went to her lips in mock dismay.

“But no, Betsy! This cannot be the duenna type Paul told you you must have!
She is far too young, too pretty and too chic to chaperone anyone, even you!
You have a real dragon on the way, surely—no?”

Betsy shook her head. “I haven’t. She’s my cousin; her name is Caroline
Neville; she came down by train this morning. She’s coming to join me at the
villa, and as far as I remember Paul didn’t make it a condition that I had to send
for a—a hag! And we didn’t want to be taken out to lunch, thank you. We had a
lot to say to each other, and even if we had needed escorts, they’re two a penny
round here, didn’t you know?” she said ungraciously.

Ariane Lescure soothed, “All right, all right!” and then spoiled the oil-on-
troubled-waters effect of that by adding, “I’m afraid it’s as Paul says of you,
Betsy chérie—one must handle you gently, remembering that it is the jeune fille,
the teenager in you which makes you so—what was his word?—thorny...”
Ignoring Betsy’s scowl, she turned to Caroline and held out a hand.

“Welcome to the Côte d’Azur—I may call you Caroline? Betsy hasn’t
introduced me, but my name is Lescure—Ariane Lescure. We met through Paul
Pascal. And you—like Betsy, you are English and you live in London too?”

Deciding against clouding the issue by a mention of Sidcup, Caroline said yes
to both questions. Adding, “May I congratulate you on your own excellent
English, Madame?”

Ariane lifted a slim shoulder. “Just a part of one’s civilized education, and
your cousin prefers it to French. Don’t you, chérie? But you are leaving
now?”—as Betsy signalled the waiter and rose. “Must you? Half an hour later
and I’d have liked you to join Claude and me for coffee. But you’ll come along
for drinks tonight instead, won't you? Not a party. Just a handful of people,
though not Paul, of course.”

Betsy muttered, “You don’t have to bribe me with Paul, you know. But I don’t
think we’ll come, thank you all the same. We haven’t been up to the villa yet,
and Caroline—” only to check as Ariane’s playful finger wagged within an inch
of her nose.

Ariane chided, “Now, now, I refuse to have Caroline made your excuse! On
the Riviera she is entitled to fun, and why not? That means parties and people
—men for choice—and those she won’t meet in Villon, unless you count
Berthin ... So just give me time to prink after stepping off my treadmill, and
we’ll say about seven-thirty, shall we? And you really must forgive me, dear, for
suspecting you do only accept my hospitality when I am able to bribe you with
the promise of Paul!”

At that Betsy flushed an angry red beneath her tan. “Oh, all right, we’ll come.
That is, if you’d like to?” she appealed to Caroline.
 “I should very much. I’d love to,” said Caroline, her smile and enthusiastic
acceptance a shade overdone in an effort to offset a pointed rudeness with which
she meant to tax Betsy later. But as soon as they were alone Betsy exploded into
mimicry of Ariane Lescure.

“ ‘Cherie’! ‘Betsy, ma petite.’ ‘You naughty child!’ You’d think I was five
years old! Why doesn’t she pat me on the head and offer me an all-day sucker as
well, I wonder?” she raged.

“Probably because your manners didn’t merit one. You weren’t exactly all
sweetness and light, were you? Meanwhile you could solve some mysteries for
me. For instance, who is someone called Bertha at Villon, and who is this ‘Paul’
who seems to have forestalled Aunt Clio in saying you weren’t to stay on alone
at the villa?” Caroline asked.

“Oh, that?” They had reached the car and Betsy was using her ignition key.
“Paul Pascal is my landlord, and what Ariane meant was that he only agreed to
let me keep on the villa on condition I was chaperoned by someone. Berthin
Pascal is his cousin; he lives with his sister Ursule in a cottage on the estate.
There’s no mystery about them and I’ve promised to tell you the whole story
when we get to the villa. So leave it for now, will you, please? I’ve got to
concentrate on driving—”

Taking her cue from the irritation in her cousin’s tone, Caroline obediently
said no more and soon was absorbed in the scenery of the road which took them
out of Cannes.

Beyond the outskirts it climbed all the way, through villages sleepy and
shuttered against the midday heat, and along the shoulders of hillsides neatly
terraced with plantations of maize, rank upon rank of floribunda roses and
stripling peach trees, each with its protective canopy of straw plait. By contrast
with the grandeur of the distant blue peaks of the sheltering mountains it was a
gentle, ordered countryside, and Villon, when they reached it, was a village like
all the others they had passed through, and so unmistakably French that Caroline
could have crooned with the sheer pleasure of being back in the country she
loved.
 There was a bridge high over a tumbling river, (“the Siagne that Villon is ‘sur’
” Betsy vouchsafed) ; an avenue bordered by the syringa which blossoms twice
a year in the region; a couple more hairpin turns and then Betsy drew up at a
small white villa with its back to a hill and its face full to the generous sun. But
its windows were screened by gay striped sunblinds and inside it was cool and
shadowed and as uncluttered by superfluous furniture as the houses of Southern
France can afford to be.

Caroline fell in love with her room, the twin of Betsy’s at the opposite end of
the house. It contained the inevitable carved armoire for her clothes, a single
chair, a mirror making a dressing-table of a chest of drawers and a bed with a
shelf fitment holding an oddly masculine assortment of books.

She scanned their titles. Two or three of the Babar series; some early P. G.
Wodehouse in translation; a classic or two; Captain Hornblower in English;
some French cloak-and-dagger stuff; a volume of war photographs, well
thumbed. The owner’s signature was in childish script on the flyleaf of the
Babar; was ornate with experimental flourishes on the others. It was obviously
part of a boyhood library, and what was the P. Pascal of the signature reading
now? Caroline wondered idly as she opened the shutters on to a tiny square of
balcony, facing east, where she promised herself she would see the sun rise
tomorrow.

She took a bath and went down to the dolls’ house salon where Betsy presided
over a tea-tray she had prepared herself, explaining that Marie went home to
Villon for siesta time and returned in the evening to prepare dinner and to sleep.

“The Latour family, more or less to a man, is in the service of the Pascals,”
Betsy said. “Marie’s mother does all the laundry for the three houses—Paul’s,
Berthin’s and this one; her father works on the estate and her aunt, Simone,
keeps house for Paul.” Betsy paused and shrugged. “Which is as good a lead-in
as any to putting you in the picture, I suppose. Where would you like me to
begin?”

Caroline said, “With Paul, I think, since he seems to dominate the

background.”
 “You mean all that coy stuff from Ariane? Yes, well—the set-up is that the
Pascal estate is a huge flower farm growing flowers for the perfume factories at
Grasse. A good many of the plantations we passed on the way up here belong;
there are acres of jasmine fields over there—” Betsy waved a vague hand—“and
a whole mimosa forest higher up. They grow roses and carnations and sweet
herbs—the lot, and Paul should have inherited it, lock stock and barrel, when his
beast of a father died a year or two ago.”

“Why ‘beast’? Did he cut Paul off with a shilling? Or no—” Caroline
corrected herself, “by French law, parents can’t entirely disinherit their children,
can they?”

“Apparently not. But Papa Pascal did the next best thing—he took out his
spite on Paul by leaving the place and the income to him, but tying it to the most
lunatic conditions you ever heard—”

“Such as?”

“Why, that Paul, who, so everyone says, has the know-how of flower farming
from A to Z, should hand over every scrap of control to Berthin for as long as he
—Paul, I mean—is a bachelor! And if Berthin marries first, then he comes in as
co-heir and still keeps full control for good, which would be legal enough, it
seems.”

Caroline puzzled. “It sounds pretty crazy, I admit. Vindictive too, unless
Pascal pere thought he had reason to distrust Paul on more counts than one.
What was it that sparked off the quarrel between them, do you know?”

“Only the hearsay everyone knows. They say Paul made a bad gaffe in some
dispute over a flower crop and the old man never forgave him for it. Then there
was something rather horrid about a girl ... A village girl to whom Paul, on his
own admission, had given quite a big sum of money just before she was killed
in an accident on her moped. His father chose to believe the worst of him over
that too, and you’ll hear various versions of it while you’re here. But it’s all so
much wretched talk, and even if it’s true, it’s all over now and I’m not judging
him for it.”
 There was a pause. Then Caroline asked quietly, “In other words, you’ve
fallen for Paul and you won’t let yourself believe scandal of him?”

Betsy nodded, her eyes wide. “Yes, isn’t it awful? I know only too well what
you’re thinking. Edward—”

“Exactly. Edward,” said Caroline dryly. “So Aunt Clio’s intuition was on the
beam; Paul Pascal was the reason for your refusal to go on to Italy with Tom and
Ann Drage, and you’re prepared to ditch Edward because of him?”

“No ... Yes! That is, I couldn’t help myself if Paul had ever given me a second
thought up to date—”

“And hasn’t he?”

“No, except by chucking me under the chin and calling me ‘Pretty sweeting.’
Oh, not literally, of course. But that’s the drift. He thinks he need only turn on
that riveting smile of his and buy me a monster ice to keep me happy. And when
you’re as crazy as I am about him, that hurts. And don’t say, for goodness’ sake,
that when man treats you like that, it’s time to snap out of being crazy about
him, because I can’t!”

“I think you mean you don’t want to, and I can understand that. But there is
Edward,” Caroline reminded her. “If he hadn’t gone to South America, you’d
have been engaged by now, wouldn’t you? And if you’d done the civilized thing
and gone to Italy with the Drages, I bet you’d have laughed off this thing you’ve
got for Paul Pascal within a week.”

“I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t! And how right you are that I don’t really want to,
because though I’m sorry about Edward, compared to Paul he does look a bit
like—like yesterday’s hash. And if I had gone to Italy the only thing that would
have happened would be that I’d have muffed the only chance I have of an affair
with Paul. Out of sight, out of mind ... That’s why I was determined to stay on at
all costs.”

“And you mean you’re prepared to stand up Edward on the very brink of
getting engaged to him for the sake of the outside chance of a mere affair with
Paul Pascal? Betsy, that’s plain madness, and you know it!”

Betsy bit her lip. “Beggars can’t be choosers, and the way I feel I’d settle for a
few dates and some—well, love-making. Of course I want more—who
wouldn’t? I mean, I dream regularly that Paul has asked me to marry him. But
that’s only wishful thinking at this stage. For the moment all I dare ask is that he
should take me seriously and look at me—really look at me instead of always
past me at—someone else. And oh, Caro, do be your age and admit that when
you’re really in love that’s all you do ask at first and you’re willing to snatch at
any crumbs you can get!” she finished in rather piteous appeal.

Caroline said gravely, “I know, though I wish it hadn’t happened to you. And
though you’re going to hate me for saying so, all this humility over crumbs
sounds painfully like infatuation, and I know about that too, having had some.”

“I suppose you mean that lout Roy Sanders, who walked out on you? But
everyone but you knew he was just a plain cad, and you can’t possibly compare
him with Paul!”

“I didn’t mean to, not having met your Paul. I was only remembering how
cravenly grateful I was for any favors Roy liked to throw me, and that it wasn’t
until I came to my senses later that I realized real love knows its own value
better than that. You see, Betsy,” Caroline paused in search of the words which
would express her conviction, “when you think you’re in love, it’s only natural
to want to give ... and give, and go on giving. But you shouldn’t have to grovel
for whatever you get in return, and it sounds as if with regard to Paul Pascal
you’re prepared, not to say doomed, to do that.”

Betsy sighed. “ ’Fraid we’re not talking on the same wavelength, Caro dear.
Let’s face it, I only suffer the odd twinge of conscience over Edward now and
then, and for the rest I’m unrepentant. Uncomplaining too ... I am prepared to
wait until Paul notices I’m around, and when you meet him I’ve an idea even
you may see what I mean!”

“I wonder,” mused Caroline. “After Roy, I told myself I was insulated against
charmers, and I’ve an idea I still am. But be that as it may, the men people
assure me I’m bound to like I hardly ever do, and the ones who—”

“But Paul isn’t a charmer. Where on earth did you get that idea?” Betsy
exploded.

“I don’t know, except that a chucker of chins and a ‘riveting’ smile conjures
up visions of just the type I grew out of with Roy Sanders,” Caroline retorted.

“Look, forget Roy Sanders in relation to Paul, will you?” said Betsy intensely.
“I told you, I only get the impression he’s chucking me under the chin. And just
because he’s got a sort of impudent, puckish kind of smile that mows me down,
that’s not to say it’s flashy. Since Roy, haven’t you met any men with smiles that
get under your guard, whatever else about them doesn’t?”

“Yes,” said Caroline—and knew that she had, quite recently.

“Well, then,” pursued Betsy, “that disposes of ‘charmer’ in the sense you
meant. For one thing, Paul is way up here in height—” her arm went up at full
stretch—“and there’s nothing typically French about him either. He had an
English mother, but he doesn’t take after his father or her, to judge by their
portraits up at his house. In fact, his mother was so fair that she reminded me of
you a bit, in coloring at any rate. And he hasn’t bewitched me with his broken
accent, because, owing to his mother, he’s as at home in English as he is in
French. And if you’re wondering how, with Berthin Pascal in control, Paul had
the say-so about letting this place, it’s because it was a present from his father to
his mother, and before she died she had given it to Paul to use as a garconnière
where he could throw bachelor parties. He doesn’t need it now, of course. Since
his father died he has had the big house to himself and Simone Latour runs it for
him. Not that he troubles it much. He spends most of his time in Cannes or Nice
or shooting off at a tangent to Paris. But if he is loafing and acting the playboy,
as people say of him, whose fault is that?”

“Obviously you don’t consider it’s his!”

“Well, I ask you, is it? It’s the fault of that wretched will which handed his
birthright to Berthin on a plate!”

“All the same, if they’re both reasonable men, I should have thought they
could come to some working arrangement. And anyway, doesn’t the remedy lie
with Paul?”

“You mean he could marry and boot Berthin out when he liked?”

“Yes, well—no one quite knows why he hasn’t. Of course I want to believe
it’s because he means to marry for love and that if I stick around there’s a
chance he might choose me. And if that’s wishful thinking, which I suppose it
is, at least it’s easier thinking than that he’s just biding his time, waiting for
Ariane.”

Caroline echoed, “Ariane? Ariane Lescure? But she was wearing a wedding
ring. Wasn’t that man she was with at Bel-Ami her husband, then?”

“That one? Heavens, no! He was just one of her clients. I don’t know how
much business she does with them, but she’s always toting different ones, and
they mostly seem good for a meal-ticket or as an excuse for a party.”

“What is her business?”

“She has a shop—no, sorry, a salon! ‘Salon Ariane’—on the Croisette, where
she sells antiques and objets d’art, which she’s pleased to call her
‘treadmill’—you heard her—though actually it’s her assistant, a Polish refugee
named Witold Czinner, who does all the donkey work and clinches most of the
sales, they say. If she isn’t doing pretty well, I wouldn’t know what she uses for
money, for a shop and a service flat over it right on the Croisette must cost her
the earth. But all I hope is that that wedding-ring and the ‘Madame’ she calls
herself means she really has got a husband off-stage. Because if it’s true, as the
set says of her, that she’s only putting on a dedicated career-girl act while she
angles for Paul, that puts me way down the track on the very first lap. I mean,
can I hope to compete with the brand of S. A. her type seems to be born with? I
ask myself. Well, can I?” Betsy appealed rhetorically.
 Studiedly blunt, Caroline said, “Simple. If you know you can’t make the
distance, don’t compete. Meanwhile, it strikes me your set thrives a lot too much
for its health on hearsay and gossip and a mass of woolly speculation, and as far
as I can see, the only person who isn’t tangled in a web of the stuff is Berthin
Pascal. How has he managed to keep clear of it? Or hasn’t he?”

Betsy took Caroline’s empty cup and returned her own to the tray. “Oh,
Berthin—” she said, her tone dismissing him.

“Well?” invited Caroline.

“Well, just that, except as the principal blot on Paul’s landscape, he doesn’t
signify much. He’s probably about Paul’s age, thirty-two. But he’s more than a
bit of a gargoyle and terribly earnest and upstage. The worthy type. You know!”

“His sister then? Ursule?”

“Oh, she’s the dragon curled up at Berthin’s gate. Older than he is and devoted
to him, and though by the same token Paul can do no right in her eyes, as she
doesn’t speak English the things she says of him go right over my head, thanks
be. But look, Caro—while I sling these things into the kitchen for Marie to wash
up, will you write her a note in French to tell her we’ll be out this evening and
that we’ll settle for, say, an omelette and some fresh fruit for dessert when we
come in? There’s a ballpoint and some paper on the bureau there. Can do?”

“I hope so.” Pen at the ready, Caroline paused to ask, “By the way, I gather
from what Ariane Lescure said I shan’t be meeting friend Paul tonight?”

Betsy turned at the door. “No, he’s in Paris. I told you—he goes there fairly
often, though I don’t know what for. But after Mummy telephoned, I told him
you were coming down and he said he would be back within the week. So you’ll
see him before long.”

“I can hardly wait!” murmured Caroline, and was relieved when Betsy took
the irony of that in good part with an emphatic, “Beast!” and a wrinkling of her
nose as she left the room.
 When Betsy set the little car to the road once more the sun had barely set. But
as they dropped circuitously towards Cannes, here and there its earliest lights
were pricking the dusk, and by the time they reached the front, the lamps of the
Croisette were already a necklace of strung beads for the noble curve of the bay.

On the way Betsy had been worried about the car’s performance. She had had
it in dock a day or two previously, she told Caroline, but it still was not pulling
properly and she would not undertake the uphill return journey until it was. So
they left it for checking at an all-night garage on the Rue des Lerins and walked
the short distance to Ariane Lescure’s flat.

There the street door alongside the darkened salon opened automatically to
their ring. “Trust her to have all the glamor gadgetry,” was Betsy’s tart
comment. And again, as they mounted the stairs to a crescendo of noise,
laughter and the chinking of glasses, “I ask you! Her idea of ‘a few people’
always is the kind of rout that would crowd the Casino to its doors!” Then a
second door opened to them; their arrival caused a brief hush among the people
nearest to it; across a smoke-haze they were scrutinized; then Betsy was being
greeted by howls of welcome and Caroline was being introduced to a catalogue
of Christian names.

Someone brought them drinks without consulting their tastes. Betsy drifted
away and came back without having contacted their hostess, and for some time
Ariane was not to be seen until suddenly she was bearing down upon Betsy,
both hands extended.

“There you are at last, Betsy honey! And pretty duenna Caroline too! And
what do you suppose I have as a reward surprise for you, now you are here?
Why, that Paul is here after all! Here, and asking for you. Where was his little
Betsy kitten, he wanted to know, and would she need rescuing from the clutches
of the English cousin, did I suppose? So of course I told him no—if possible, the
English cousin was even more ch—But there he is now to see for himself. Yes,
over there, talking to Aimée Honorat ... He doesn’t see us, I’m afraid. Oh, now
he does—Paul, viens-toi, mon ami!” As she called, she made a castanet crack of
finger and thumb which caused heads to turn and the man she was signalling to
nod and to sketch a wide, leisurely salute in reply.
 A moment more and he was excusing himself to his companion and was
threading his way through the crowd. Then Betsy, radiant, was ducking away
from his playful tweak at her hair; Ariane, by way of introduction of him to
Caroline, was murmuring his name, and then he was ready with a formal hand
outstretched at the same time as his audacious eyes, meeting Caroline’s, were
for some reason daring her to acknowledge him as anyone other than the total
stranger which they both knew he was not.

CHAPTER THREE

LATER, Caroline was to tell herself she could not possibly have known she
would meet this man again. And yet, doing so against all the odds, it was as if
some uncanny sixth sense which had never doubted it had drained the moment
of enough surprise to enable her to share the small conspiracy with him and to
put her hand briefly in his without a glimmer of recognition.

They exchanged the cool smiles of new acquaintances and made the socially
correct remarks, Paul Pascal speaking English as colloquial as Caroline’s and, as
Betsy had said, without a trace of accent. Then Ariane, her touch on his arm a
half-caress at which Betsy scowled said, “I’ll collect you on my next time round,
Paul, Meanwhile, have fun!” and Betsy clamored, “Paul, I don’t understand! I
thought you were still in Paris. Why did you come back, and how and when?”

He grinned down at her from the height she had described to Caroline as “way
up here.” “Questions to be answered in their respective order, as for exam
paper?” he queried.

She giggled. “Yes.”

“Well, then—why? Because Paris had lost its savor and suddenly didn’t seem
to have what it takes.”

“Oh, Paul! It couldn’t! Not Paris!”

“Then it must have been the counter-attractions down here. Next question—
How? By train. When? Last night, arriving this morning.”

“But last night’s train was how Caroline came. I met her off it here, and you
weren’t on it!”
 “I had been. Going up, I had boarded it at St. Raphael, so on the way down I
got off there, in order to pick up my car. I drove home and took a most necessary
bath, and during the morning I rang you to suggest coming down for a swim.”

“You rang me? Paul, you lamb—did you really?” Betsy’s rapt expression was
just this side of slavish.

“Cross my heart. But Marie said you weren’t in. So, I swam alone and after
lunch I rang Ariane, who asked me to come along tonight, and here I am.”

“Yes, and two lovely days before I expected to see you! But you could have
tried phoning me again after lunch. I showed Cannes to Caroline this morning
and we swam too—from Bar Soleil. But we were back at the villa some time
after three. And anyway I wonder you didn’t happen to see Caroline on the train.
In the bar or the restaurant car or somewhere. But I suppose you didn’t or you’d
have said, ‘Well, fancy that!’ or ‘The world’s a small place’ when you met each
other just now, wouldn’t you?”

Momentarily a crooked brow lifted in Caroline s direction. Then he agreed

gravely, “We should, shouldn’t we? Therefore we couldn’t have met ... And yet,
d’you know—” the rakish glance became a direct scrutiny—“I’ve an idea I did
see Cousin Caroline, though only in passing, as it were.”

“You did?”

“Yes. As I got off at St. Raphael, I saw her through the window of the corridor,
probably on her way back to her berth from breakfast.”

‘Oh, only then? Well, even if you’d known who she was, that was too late for
a get-together, wasn’t it? So you’d better have one now while I hunt down Clare
West, who borrowed a bikini from me last week and hasn’t uttered about it
since. But stick around, Paul, won’t you? Don’t leave yet, because I’ll be back.
Oh—and incidentally, Caroline isn’t the halfwit over French that I am. She more
or less cut her milk-teeth on it and she speaks it marvellously. Show him, Caro
—do!” Betsy urged as she left.
 In silence the other two watched her go. Then, still speaking English, Paul
Pascal said, “Tricky. But between us we handled it pretty well, wouldn’t you
say?”

“Handled what?” asked Caroline tartly, though she knew. “If you mean not
telling Betsy and Madame Lescure that we did meet on the train, perhaps you’ll
tell me why it’s to be ‘handled’ at all?”

“Didn’t you want it to be?”

“Why should I?”

“But if you didn’t,” he countered, “why, at sight of me just now, didn’t you
cry, ‘Ha, villain!’ and unmask me as the fast mover who made an abortive pass
at your virtue last night?”

“Don’t be silly. I suppose because you weren’t and didn’t,” Caroline retorted,
piqued by the ridicule of his tone.

“Ah, but wouldn’t it have made a wow of a story that I was and did? No, shall
I tell you why you held your peace when you saw I was going to hold mine?”

“If you like, and if you think you know why.”

He nodded maddeningly. “I imagine I do. It was for the same reason, on which
I’ll bet you a dozen pairs of nylons—what size do you take?—to a packet of
cigarettes, that you hadn’t mentioned last night’s little brush even to Betsy?”

“I hadn’t, as a matter of fact.”

“But not because you’d forgotten, it. Because it rankled.”

“Rankled?”

“That’s what I said. You knew you’d gone unnecessarily stiff-necked over my
innocent invitation to make peace over a drink, and you weren’t risking Betsy’s
missing the whole point of the story and wondering what all your virtuous
umbrage was about. Confess now—am I right?”

Caroline fought a brief losing battle with her honesty. “In a way, yes,” she
admitted. “Later I did realize I hadn’t behaved as well as I might have done. But
even if I had second thoughts about accepting before I left, I didn’t have them
any more when you and the attendant went all-boys-together at my expense
when you thought I couldn’t hear what you said.”

Unrepentant, he laughed. “Just how wrong can you get? At the time you were
meant to hear, in order to pay you out for being so upstage. And other fish in the
sea; other trains on the Metro—how else is a man to save his face when a pretty
girl has done her best to stamp on it? Which is, you might say, where we came
in—I hope you realize, I mean, that it was to save your face with Ariane and
Betsy that I signalled ‘Cave’ as I did?”

“To save mine?”

“But of course! At that moment, if you’d batted an eyelid of recognition, or if I

had, we’d have had to give chapter and verse of how, when and where, and as,
on your own admission, you already had a conscience about treating me so
badly, don’t you see how your very sense of guilt would have aided and abetted
me in seeing that you came out of the thing a lot worse than I did?”

At the sheer audacity of that Caroline had to laugh. “All right,” she said. “And
now I suppose I’m expected to lead a deputation of thanks to you for your
forbearance?”

He appeared to consider the suggestion. Then, magnanimously, “No, I’ll pass

that up if you’ll agree to settle on both sides for an assurance of no enduring
hard feelings, no malice borne—hm?”

Dimpling, Caroline echoed, “No hard feelings. No malice borne. Except for
—”
 “I’ll stretch a point. Except for what?”

“For allowing me to stumble on in French as you did, when you can speak
English as you do and when from the moment I opened my mouth you must
have known by my accent that I wasn’t French at all. If I may say so, that was
just plain mean!”

“Mean? Nothing of the sort! That was just my native chivalry at work, letting
you speak French if that was what you wanted. Because you addressed me first,
if you remember. You begged my pardon.”

“Then you did know?”

“Of course, just as you’d recognize a foreign accent yourself. But perhaps it
wasn’t entirely chivalry either. Because if you could berate me like that in
French, what, I asked myself, might you be capable of in your own language,
and I felt I’d rather not know!”

“You don’t,” Caroline told him dryly, “have to overstate your case. But what
you are saying is that you knew I was English. Not German for instance, nor
Dutch?”

“Oh, yes. If you hadn’t opened your mouth, you had that English rose stamp
about you. What’s more—can you take this, I wonder?—before you stalked off
in a state of dudgeon, I’d had occasion to admire the excellent clarity of your
block lettering on the label of your bag.”

“You mean you’d read my name on the label? So that if you’d already heard it
from Betsy—?”

“Which I had. And though Betsy hadn’t added a description of you, when your
label made me a free gift of ‘Neville, Passenger to Cannes via Paris’ can you
wonder I promised myself there, ought to be a piquant flavor to our next
encounter?”
 For a moment he watched her in impish enjoyment of her discomfiture. Then
he quoted briskly, “ ‘No malice borne’—remember? I’m holding you to that,”
and took her empty glass from her.

“What were you drinking? A dry sherry? Then if you’ll wait here, I’ll go and
track down another for you. Oh, and while I think of it,” he turned on a heel and
grinned back at her, “about those cigarettes you owe me—I smoke Gauloises,
I’ll settle for a pack of twenty, and I’ll give you time to pay!”

He returned a few minutes later, but Ariane Lescure came with him and so did
the man named Claude and another girl. Paul moved away to join another group
presently and Caroline only glimpsed him again before Betsy sought her out to
say she was ready to leave if Caroline was, but that there was a snag. She had
rung the garage to hear that the car could not be ready until the morning, which
meant that they would have to beg a lift.

“But there are two characters, laboratory students from one of the perfume
factories at Grasse, who say they can drop us at Villon on their way home,” she
added. “Those two over there near Paul. I’m not so sure, mind you, that one of
them, the fair one, Henri, isn’t a bit high. But if he is, I’ll make André promise
to drive, so we’ll get home in one piece, I hope.”

Paul, however, when he heard of the plan, had other views. “Nonsense. I’ll
take you back myself,” he said.

“Oh, Paul, how super of you! I’d much rather go with you. But what about
Henri and André—they have offered,” Betsy worried.

“You’ll have to cry off, or I will for you. In their state they might manage to
make Villon by instinct and Grasse by scent. But neither Caroline nor you,
honey, are riding with them while they try, see?”

“All right, though André is still sober.”

“Want to bet he will be, when he hits the fresh air? Have you said goodnight to
Ariane? No? Well, cut along and do it, and I’ll see you both outside.”
 When they went out he was waiting by a long open car. Betsy made to get into
the seat beside the driver’s, but his hooked finger beckoned her into the back.

“You can sit beside Caroline. I need elbow room tonight.” With his hand on
the mechanism of the hood, “Do you want this thing up or down?” he asked.

When both girls said, with one voice, “Down, please,” he set off and Betsy sat
forward, cradling her chin on her linked fingers on the back of the seat beside
him.

“I wish you’d let me drive this car some time, Paul.”

“This one? All right.”

“You mean I may?”

“M’m. Give me time to get dual control fitted, and we’ll stage a tearaway on
Daytona Beach or Pendine Sands.”

“Daytona! Paul, you know I meant I want to drive it alone, myself, say in the
Gorges du Loup or along the Corniche!”

He nodded. “I do know. But you’re not going to. It’s a lot too powerful for you
on these roads. So you’d better stick to that bubble-gum you’ve got and in which
you look just like what the grown-ups promised me I might see if I plied a clap
pipe and bowl of soapsuds long enough, though all I ever got was the colors of
the rainbow!”

At that Caroline laughed, but Betsy only frowned.

“Paul, you beast! I’m a good driver and you know it. And if you don’t let me
try this one, one of these days I’ll play hookey with it and show you,” she
threatened.

For answer he reached back with a finger and thumb and tweaked the small
nose that was just below his shoulder. “You play hookey with my car, and you’ll
get the spanking of your young life. And now could you refrain from breathing
down my neck and entertain Caroline instead? She’s the guest,” he said.

He was a superb driver himself, handling the powerful car as if he and it,
centaur-like, were one entity. Behind them the lights of Cannes dropped away
and as they climbed, the hilltop ones which studded the darkness ahead appeared
to be hung in the sky. Much sooner than Caroline expected or wanted, the car
swept through sleeping Villon and drew up at the little house.

“You’ll come in, Paul?” Betsy asked.

“Not tonight, little one. Both Caroline and I have had a long day.” French
fashion, he shook hands with both of them, took his seat again and waving a
hand behind his head, roared away.

Betsy stood transfixed, then turned to Caroline. “He’s going back!” she said
bleakly.

“Not to his house? Back to Cannes? How do you know?”

“I can tell by the hum of the engine, and look— ”

Sure enough, from where they stood they could see the headlamps making a
channel of light along the level immediately below; at a turn in the road the
darkness pounced, blotting them out; they raked once more across the river
bridge and then were gone for good. The car was certainly returning by the road
by which it had come.

“ ‘A long day’! He only pretended he was going home himself because he

wouldn’t trust us with Henri and André, and now he’s going straight back to
Ariane’s,” said Betsy, working it out.

Caroline said, “Surely not? Most people had left or were leaving by the time
we came away.”
 “That makes it worse.” Dispiritedly Betsy led the way into the house, and
Caroline, knowing what she meant, wondered why she too should hope that it
wasn’t so.

Marie, a dark girl in her late twenties, had their supper already laid and in an
incredibly short time produced a mushroom omelette which melted in the
mouth. She was delighted to find that Caroline spoke French, and before she
returned to the kitchen she amused them both with a graphic pantomime of how
she and Betsy had had to communicate since Tom and Ann Drage had left.

“Mademoiselle Lane, she smile and say, ‘Marie, do so—and so—and so, s’il
vous plait.’ Moi aussi, I say ‘Mademoiselle, you wish so—and so and so—and
so?’ Sometimes—that is good English, no?—we understand each other. But
when we do not—la, les crises, les crises!” She was still laughing as she went
out of the room.

While the girls ate they talked “party,” with Betsy giving Caroline thumbnail
sketches of the people she had met. Then with an air of offering him for
Caroline’s critical dissection Betsy said, “And Paul? What did you think of
him?”

There was a beat of silence between question and answer. Then, “I—liked
him,” said Caroline, though knowing as soon as she spoke that liking was the
least complex of her reactions to Paul Pascal.

Betsy mocked, “Don’t be too madly enthusiastic, will you? Or I don’t know—
could that be a rave notice, considering you had made up your mind you weren’t
going to like him at all?”

“I’d done nothing of the sort. It was simply that I’m always a bit on the
defensive against people who are being too obviously sold to me.”

“Well, anyway, you realize now he’s not that beastly thing you called him—‘a
charmer’?”

Caroline smiled. “I take back ‘charmer.’ He strikes me as being too positive,

too sure of himself to need to lay on any conscious charm. But isn’t he ever
serious?”

“Serious? Who wants him serious?”

“Don’t you, sometimes? I know I should, if I thought I was in any danger of

falling in love with him.”

“Well, you’re not, are you? And though I admit I’d like him to take me
seriously, so far as I’m I concerned, one of the really riveting things about him is
the way he does clown when he must be eaten with bitterness and frustration
over the estate.”

To that Caroline could not resist murmuring, “Il Pagliacco, in fact?” But
despising it at once as both tart and cheap, she added, “All right. I agree—he is
fun. But are you sure you aren’t so starry-eyed about him just because he is—
well, something of a contrast to Edward?”

Betsy grimaced. “What a loaded question! You mean, as his best friend
couldn’t call Edward gay, it could be that Paul is no more than a sort of rebound
on my part? But no—before Paul happened, I thought I could take most of
Edward’s heavy weather about beef and costings and market trends for the sake
of his being so unmixed up and such a lean-uponable person. Always knowing
where I was with him too ... But the difference is that it never occurred to me to
wonder what I should have done if I had never met Edward, whereas now I
wake up at night in a cold sweat, thinking, ‘Supposing, just supposing I hadn’t
come here this year with the Drages, I might never have known Paul!’ Which
proves it’s the real thing, doesn’t it? My being so rock-bottom grateful that I did
come and have met him, I mean?”

Hearing an echo of a fear and a gratitude she had once known herself—though
how mistakenly!—Caroline did not scoff. She said gently, “I see you’re
convinced it’s the real thing. But in the meanwhile, what about Edward? How
often do you hear from him?”

“I suppose he writes two or three times a week. But the letters pile up a bit in
batches.”

“And when did you last write to him?”

“I—don’t remember, though it was before Tom and Ann left.”

“A love letter?”

“Caro, don’t catechize me! Yes, I suppose it was. I didn’t utter about Paul, but
ought I to now?”

Caroline said, “No.” And then with more conviction, “No. Aunt Clio says this
mission could mean a lot to his future, and you haven’t the right to throw a
spanner in the works by worrying and upsetting him when he’s so far away and
can’t do a thing about it. But write. You must do that. Promise me?”

At Betsy’s diffident nod Caroline went on, “Our other problem is what to tell
Aunt Clio and Uncle Ralph. I think you’d better cable them non-committally
tomorrow, saying I’ve arrived and everything is all right. And I’ll write myself
to Aunt Clio, filling out what you’ve told her already or she has guessed and
reassuring her as best I can. Of course the thing she would really like to hear
would be that you were cutting your losses and going to join Tom and Ann in
Italy. But I suppose you won’t?”

“Not until I’m convinced I’ve got losses to cut. You never know—I might win
out yet.”

“But you will think seriously about it all, won’t you?” Caroline pressed.

“I don’t have to think,” said Betsy. “I know.”

Late as they had talked overnight, Caroline woke early to find the sun on her
balcony already as warm as at noon in an English heatwave. Without dressing,
she basked there, now looking at the view, now turning the pages of one of the
books from the bed fitment, until the aroma of coffee confirmed that Marie was
about, and Betsy was calling from her room that café complet would be ready
for them when they were.

Over it Betsy announced she must go down to Cannes to collect the car. Would
Caroline care to go too?

But Caroline said, “I don’t think I will. I’d an idea of exploring round here on
foot. That is, if we’re free to go where we like on the estate?”

“Heavens, yes. There are paths and cart-tracks everywhere.” Betsy looked at
her watch. “I shall have to go down by bus, so I’d better scram if I’m to catch
the nine o’clock—Or shall I ring Paul and ask him if he’s going in and will give
me a lift?”

It was a decision rather than a question, but she returned from the telephone
crestfallen. “He’s not there,” she said dully.

“Not? So early in the morning?”

“I know. Odd, isn’t it? But when I asked Simone if she was sure, she went all
porcupine on me, almost spelling it out to make, certain I understood. Monsieur
was not in; she didn’t know when he would be, so that it would be useless to ask
me to call again. But I’m convinced he wasn’t just out. We know he went back
to Cannes last night, and it’s my belief he stayed there and Simone wasn’t
telling. Which, let’s face it, means—”

“You can’t assume that!” put in Caroline quickly.

“Well, do you think I want to? But you didn’t hear Simone on the line, putting
up a smokescreen round him like crazy,” said Betsy.

When she had gone to catch the bus Caroline settled under the sun umbrella on
the villa’s tiny lawn to write her difficult letter to Chicago. Then, none too keen
that Betsy should see what she had said in it, she decided to post it at once and
to edit its contents for Betsy’s hearing later. So she walked into the village with
it, stopping at the first tabac she came to in order to buy stamps for it and
cigarettes, proffering in payment a fifty new franc note which non-plussed the
shop woman’s till.

Fingering the note, “Vous en avez d’autre, Madame? Je n’ai peu de petite
monnaie,” she explained.

But Caroline had no other note, nor enough change, and the woman was again
rummaging in the till when a man’s voice behind Caroline asked, “May I help
you with that note, Madame Giseau? I happen to have plenty of change.”

The woman looked up and beyond Caroline’s shoulder. “Ah, je vous remercie!
Que vous êtes gentil, Monsieur Pascal!” she exclaimed, at which Caroline
turned quickly, ready with a greeting which, however, died lamely on her lips at
sight of a stranger.

He bought pipe tobacco and matches for himself, and while the three-cornered
money transaction was settled, her mind registered that he must be Berthin
Pascal—a fact which he confirmed as they left the kiosk together.

He held out his hand. “We’re to be neighbors for a while, I think,

Mademoiselle. Because at a guess, you’ve come to stay with my cousin’s tenant
at Mimosa, and I’m Berthin Pascal, of whom she’ll have spoken, I daresay?”

“Yes.” Caroline put her hand in his and smiled. “Betsy has told me about you
and your sister. But as I’ve already met your cousin, when I heard your name
just now I expected to see him, which explains why I looked as blankly at you as
I did.”

“Blank? On the contrary, you were ready with a charming smile, even if it
wasn’t meant for me! But now we’ve met, may I drop you somewhere—” he
indicated the estate-car at the curb—“or, better still, would you drive with me to
my cottage in order to meet my sister?”

Caroline said, “I’d like that.” Sooner or later she must meet Ursule Pascal, and
her morning’s walk could wait.
 “Then allow me—?” His eyes asked permission to take Aunt Clio’s letter from
her and to drop it in a blue slit marked Postes on a near-by wall. On his way
there and back she had time for a swift appraisal of him in contrast to Paul—of
his height, so much nearer to her own; of his loping purposeful walk; of his
general look for all his open shirt, shorts and espadrilles—of an earnest student,
rather than of an outdoor man. Then he was opening the car door for her and
skirting it himself in order to take the driver’s seat.

As they set out—“I’m afraid I’m a pipe man, so I have no cigarettes to offer
you. But do smoke your own, won’t you? I noticed you bought one of our
French brands. Is that from real preference, I wonder, or a case of ‘When in
Rome...’?” he asked.

Caroline glanced at the packet of Gauloises in her hand. “Oh, these? But
they’re not for me. They’re for—someone else.” As she thrust them into her bag
she wished she had added, “As a matter of fact, they’re for your cousin Paul, to
settle a bet,” making it a triviality to laugh over with Berthin instead of keeping
it as a rather stale conspiracy with Paul.

But it was already too late as Berthin asked, “However, you do smoke, I take
it?”

“Yes, though I pride myself on not needing to, so I don’t usually carry any.”

“Oh, well, Ursule will have some, for I’m afraid she is an addict. Though, with
my hundred grammes and more of tobacco a week, who am I to talk?” he
laughed.

Since they met they had been speaking French throughout and now he
congratulated Caroline on her easy use of it. Where had she first learned it? How
had she kept it up? Had she ever been to the Riviera before? There was nothing
prying about his interest. He seemed really to want a background against which
to set her, and she was at once more at ease with him than with Paul. Talking to
Berthin was an exercise in relaxation, whereas fending off Paul’s swift repartee
was about as restful and profitable a pastime as shooting at water-tossed colored
balls in a fair booth ... She was explaining to Berthin the precise whereabouts of
Sidcup in relation to London’s West End when he set the car to a steep incline
off the road and nodding ahead, “Here we are.”

Not, in fact, that they were, there being a steep flight of uneven stone steps to
be negotiated between them and the rough-walled cottage which perched, eyrie-
like, sheer above them. It was a square, sturdy but rather unlovely place, with
windows so small that they seemed to be on the defensive against the sun, and it
lacked even a growth of bougainvillea or vine or a trail of the universal
geranium to break up its stark outline.

They climbed the steps and Berthin led the way in, calling to his sister and
going to find her when she did not answer his call. Left alone, Caroline was only
just accustoming her eyes to the gloom of the interior when she heard a door
bang in the kitchen quarters; another shout from Berthin, her own name this
time, and then his footsteps, loud on stone flags, hurrying back to her.

“Ursule!” he panted. “She’s had an accident. I couldn’t find her anywhere, but
then I noticed the door to our cellar was open, and she is down there on the
bottom step, unconscious! Will you come, Mademoiselle Neville, and help me
with her?”

“But of course.”

The cellar steps led down into the cold heart of the rock on which the cottage
stood. That the place was used both as a dairy and a wine vault was evidenced
by the block of butter and the broken bottle near Ursule Pascal’s inert form. But
she was no longer unconscious when the other two reached her. She was
whimpering with pain and trying to rise, only to fall back, biting her lip, when
she found she could not.

“There! Easy, easy, my cabbage! But do you think you can stand if I help you
—so, and with Mademoiselle to support you as well?” urged Berthin.

His sister, a plain, spare woman with fading hair drawn back in a tight
chignon, looked at Caroline. “Who—?” she began vaguely, but left the question
unfinished in her effort to pull herself upright with their help.
 Holding her, they watched her anxiously, Caroline noting the angry contusion
on her temple which she believed Berthin had not seen and both realizing that
her swollen right ankle was powerless to support her.

“So! Then I must carry you, and no one could say you are a great burden—
h’m?” As Berthin put one arm round her narrow shoulders, the other under her
thin knees, he said to Caroline, “I’ll take her straight to her bed if you’ll help me
with her there and stay with her while I call the doctor.”

A quarter of an hour later their first aid had done what it could for Ursule.
They had bathed and given her head bruise a cold pack and her ankle was
splinted and bandaged. Caroline advised a hot drink and blankets for her and
when the doctor arrived he approved what they had done. But he confirmed
Caroline’s suspicion that Ursule’s passive acceptance of her own presence in the
house and her intermittent drowsiness indicated a certain degree of concussion.

That meant, said the doctor, her greatest need and a “must” for her was rest for
at least several days. Her ankle injury he believed to be only a bad sprain, but as
long as it was kept supported and at rest too, whether or not it was a break could
afford to wait an X-ray diagnosis for a while. He would call again tomorrow,
and meanwhile she could be nursed, no doubt?

Berthin said she could and showed the doctor out. But then he was worrying to
Caroline, “Later I can be on hand most of the time. But this morning I had
arranged to interview some prospective employees at the Villon labor office at
noon, so I’m wondering now if, Mademoiselle Neville, I could ask you—?”

“To stay with your sister? Of course I will. But make it ‘Caroline’—please!”

“ ‘Caroline’? Oh, I see! Why then, yes, if I may. But only in exchange for
‘Berthin’ and ‘Ursule.’ Fair enough?”

When he had gone Caroline went back to see if there was anything Ursule
needed. But the sedative the doctor had given her was gradually taking effect,
and after sitting with her for some time Caroline left her to sleep.
 On the kitchen table there was an enamel plate of mixed corn which Caroline
fed to the eager hens clustered round the back door. She restored to the cool of
the larder a dish of mixed cold meats, washed up some cooking utensils and
finished the preparation of some new potatoes and green beans which Ursule
had probably intended for lunch. Then remembering the mess of butter and
broken glass on the cellar steps, she found a cloth and a bucket and a dustpan
and brush and went down to clean it up.

The cellar door opened outward off the darkest corner of the hall, and coming
up again, she was still behind it when she heard voices loud in argument,
recognizing Paul Pascal’s first, then Berthin’s. It sounded as if they had met at
the front door and were coming in together to the tune of Paul’s scornful, “Well,
if you’re prepared to see the whole darned area a write-off—go ahead!” and to
Berthin’s hot retort, “A write-off! To hear you, one would suppose it would give
you some satisfaction if it were. And if you’re so concerned about the risk of
fire up there, I wonder you don’t—”

“—Don’t do something constructive about it?”

Paul put in. “Yes, I’ve heard that one before too! But then I’m only the
character with his nose pressed to the glass, looking in ... remember? Whereas
you’re the master mind with all the know-how and say-so—or so one
understands?”

Reasonably evenly, Berthin said, “It’s a matter of opinion, that. What’s more,
you should know you remain on the wrong side of the glass by your own
choice.”

“Indeed? D’you know, I had an idea I’d been flung there, more or less on my
ear?”

“I said ‘remain there.’ There’s a difference, if you’d allow yourself to see it.”

By comparison with Paul’s truculent sarcasm Berthin’s tone was quiet,

controlled. He went on, “However, about the plantage Fragonard—I suppose
you realize the amount of ground it covers?”
 Making a small insolence of it, Paul said, “It used to be my business to know,
and I daresay I know still, to the nearest deciare or so. Say—?”

“All right. Then we both know. And agreed that it’s the biggest planting of
mimosa this side of Grasse, perhaps you’d care to advise how it is to be
adequately patrolled by the handful of men I can allot to it in high summer, with
all the other crops to be attended to?” Berthe invited.

But at that Paul exploded. “I do not ‘care to advise.’ Find your

own solution—it’s your headache.”

“Then kindly leave the pain and the cure of it to me!”

Through the hinge of the cellar door Caroline saw Paul shrug.

“Oh, I will. Don’t worry. But if you ever take time off from trying to run a
show like Prairies Pascal nose-down to a deskful of accounts and samples of
fertilizer, you should have a look some time at the kind of debris that is
cluttering Fragonard at this moment. Ever heard, for instance, of cigarette butts
causing forest fires, or that you can’t better a broken bottle if you’re in need of a
burning-glass to get a nice flame going? Well, butts and bottle-shards, your
‘high summer’ picnickers are leaving them there in quantity in tinder-dry
undergrowth that should have been cleared in the spring after cropping, when
you could have spared the men. But it’s too late now, agreed. Now you can only
rely on a better patrol system than I’ve yet seen in action up there and hope you
aren’t merely closing the stable-door after the—”

He broke off as Caroline, irked by an eavesdropping which had been forced

upon her, pushed the cellar door wide and stepped into view. He stared down the
hall at her; at her homely burden; from Berthin back to her and then laughed.

“Well, well!” he said slowly. And then—in English, which had the subtle
effect of shutting Berthin out—“And to think that when we scraped
acquaintance, I made the mistake of inviting you to a drink, whereas, if I’d only
recognized the ‘little woman’ in you that was screaming to get out, I might have
got a lot further than I did, if I’d offered you a duster or a can of detergent
instead!”

CHAPTER FOUR

FROWNING, Berthin came to take the bucket and dustpan out of Caroline’s
hands. “Now, now, you shouldn’t have troubled yourself with that!” he chided.

She smiled at him, in her turn deliberately shutting Paul out. “Why not? It
needed doing, and your sister was safely asleep before I left her," she told him.

“She was? Good.” He turned back to Paul. “I haven’t had time to tell you, but
Mademoiselle Caroline and I met by chance in the village and I brought her
back to meet Ursule. But when we got here I found Ursule half unconscious on
the cellar steps, so between us we had to get her to bed and call Dr. Lanvin to
her.”

Paul said quickly, “Good heavens, I’m sorry. Do you mean she had fallen
down the steps?”

“From what she was able to tell us, I gather she was on her way up with some
stores, remembered something else she wanted, turned and slipped then.
Anyway, she couldn’t stand on a possibly broken ankle, and Lanvin says she is
slightly concussed from hitting her head as she fell. Meanwhile, as I had to go
back to Villon, Caroline here has nobly stood by, though I certainly didn’t mean
her to turn char as well as nurse!”

Paul grinned. “Not to worry. At a guess, Caroline, when young, won every
Girl Guide badge there was! But what now for Ursule? While she is hors de
combat you’d better let me send Simone over to do for you.”

“Not at all. That won’t be necessary. I can manage.”

“For Ursule, then. Simone shall look in twice a day and bring over some
cooked stuff for you both.” As he turned to leave, Paul looked back at Caroline.
“Where’s Betsy?” he asked.

Caroline told him.

“Then you were walking when you met Berthin?”

“Yes.”

“And now? Are you staying on or can I take you back in the car? I’ve got it
below on the road.” As she hesitated, knowing she could use a few minutes
alone with him to some purpose, Berthin urged her, “I’d accept, if I were you,
Caroline. It’s pretty hot walking now.”

“Then I will, because I daresay Betsy means to be back for lunch. But—”
giving him her hand—“I may come again to see Ursule? Tomorrow, perhaps?”

“Of course. Any time, Or if you could give me a ring, I would come over for
you whenever you like. Meanwhile, thank you for this morning, for everything.”

In the car there was silence while it took the first bend in the road. Then, on an
exaggerated sigh, Paul said, “Now don’t tell me. Let me guess what causes the
depressing air of disapproval of me. Could it be, I wonder, my having whipped
smartly back on my tracks last night when, by all the best Sidcup standards, I
should have called it a day and gone like a good boy to bed?”

“Of course not. It was no business of mine. But I think Betsy was surprised
you went back when, from what you said when you left us, you were tired and
were on your own way home,” Caroline told him.

He waved an airy hand. “My dear, that was just a closing gambit! As for
instance, you might say ‘Not at home’ to me, when you were, and I knew you
were, and you knew I knew you were, and I— Look, you’ll stop me, won’t you,
when I’ve made my point?”

Caroline said crisply, “You’ve made it now, if you mean you didn’t want to
accept Betsy’s invitation to go in with us.”

“Let’s say, shall we, that a threesome doesn’t give anyone much chance?
Besides, Betsy, bless her, always wants background music to the mildest of
junketings, and her taste in beat records doesn’t coincide with mine. So, the
thought of home and bed not tempting either, I went back and dropped in for a
lone session at the tables in the Summer Casino. That made bed in the really
small hours hardly worth while, so after I’d bathed and made myself some
coffee, I went out again, this time up-valley towards Castellane and back
through Grasse. I’m still on my way back.”

“I know. That is,” Caroline corrected herself, “I know you were out pretty
early, because Betsy rang you up between eight and nine.”

“And I daresay, putting two and two together, immediately canvassed your
opinion as to whether or not I’d spent the night on the tiles? She did?”

As Caroline’s sharply drawn breath gave him his answer, he laughed. “I

thought as much, and of course Simone, who doesn’t approve on principle of
incoming calls from her own sex, wouldn’t have been helpful. However, if my
double-dealing of last night isn’t the cause of my being in the doghouse, what
is? Was it by any chance that crack of mine about dusters and detergents?”

Caroline nodded. “I thought it was rather uncalled for, and it seemed to me

that the circumstances made it doubly—cheap.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” His glance and his smile were equally disarming.
“But for the defence—when I said it, I didn’t know what the circumstances
were, and the sight of you popping up out of Bertha’s cellar, wearing a smug
‘domestic mission accomplished’ air, and about as unexpectedly as Aphrodite
rising from the waves, was too much for both my aplomb and my well-known
tact. Am I forgiven?”

In spite of herself Caroline laughed. “And just how renowned is your tact?”

“Well, shouldn’t you know? Didn’t I give you a mint example of it last night
when I refrained from telling on you to Betsy? Which raises the nice point—
though I’m not pressing for immediate payment, mind you!—do I get my pound
of flesh or not?”

“Your—? Oh, these?” As she took the cigarettes of their bet from her bag and
slipped them into the glove compartment in front of him, she was again
reminded of those tossing, elusive balls. Of how, for all your experience told you
they were intentionally geared to defy you, you still went on buying pot-shots at
them until you beggared yourself of small change without regret. So what? said
your mood, as long as it was gay and devil-may-care enough, So what—you’ve
had fun for your money, haven’t you? And, of course, you had...

She did not know that, at the thought, her mouth had quirked in private
amusement until she caught Paul’s eye in the driving mirror and heard his
question, “What’s the secret joke? May one share it?”

But knowing she couldn’t explain either the thought or the mood, she evaded
with, “It was nothing. I didn’t know I was smiling,” and then, noticing he was
halting the car at a fork in the road, “Why are you stopping here?”

“Because, theoretically speaking, our ways part here. That one—” pointing
—“takes us back to Mimosa; this one to my house. How sure are you that Betsy
means to come back for lunch?”

“I’m not sure. She said it depended on whether the car was ready and on
whom she met in Cannes, but—”

“Then if you came home with me and we rang up the villa to hear she wasn’t
back or wasn’t coming, would you stay for lunch with me?” As he saw her
hesitate, “After all, as a friend of mine you’ve got to run Simone’s gauntlet some
time, so why not now?” he urged.

What have you got to lose? she asked herself. Of course you’ll say no if Betsy
has come home. But supposing she hasn’t? Letting the possibility decide her,
Caroline said, “I’d like to very much, but only if Betsy has rung up to say she
isn’t coming.”
 “Well, if she hasn’t or is back already—” he slewed over the wheel in order to
take the right-hand fork—“I’ll make amends for last night by going over for her,
and we’ll lunch a trois instead.”

A couple of hundred yards further on the road narrowed to an avenue bordered

by sweet chestnut trees taking turn and turn about with cypresses which speared
blackly against the brilliant cobalt of the sky. Another broadening, this time to a
sweep of gravel edged by flowerbeds behind a low stone coping and then a
house as different from either the villa or Berthin’s cottage as the two latter were
from each other.

This one was of stone, square built and true to the classic tradition of the early
nineteenth century, its façade a fan-lighted doorway flanked by ground-floor
french windows opening on to a balustrade terrace and with a row of wrought-
iron balconied sash windows above. There was nothing of the chateau about it,
nor of the accepted sun-wooing style of the region. And though decades of
southern sun had mellowed its stone and put alien colors into its grey roof tiles,
it still wore the air and dignity of a town house of its period—a fact explained
by Paul as he drove under a wide archway into a pavé courtyard at its side
—“Maison Pascal, built by my great-great-grandfather when he first came south
from Paris and declared he would show ‘ces types Provencals’ what civilized
living was! The result? Well, civilized enough, though not all that luxe by
today’s standards. But I’m fond of it and I’m glad when other people take to it
too.”

Caroline told him that from its exterior she had done so already and he had just
said, “I’ll show you over it when we’ve had lunch—” when a side house-door
opened and a stumpy woman in black emerged from its shadow to accuse him,

“And where, mon brave, have you been, may one ask, since you go down to
Cannes last night, do not sleep in your bed and keep petit dejeuner waiting all
morning in vain? So! No affair of mine, you say. Nor is it. But even if you do
not see fit to acquaint this fat Simone of your movements, one would expect that
today at least you would have cared enough to be on hand for poor Clementine’s
occasion!”
 At that Paul clapped a hand to his thigh. “Mon dieu—Clementine! I did forget
her, I confess. Do you mean this is the day she—?”

Simone bridled. “And who is to say, when the expectant mother is a cat, which
is ‘the day’ for her? Enough, surely, that Clementine herself knew and prepared
accordingly ... on the bottom shelf of the cupboard in the music-room, as I
thought she might?”

Paul groaned. “As you thought she might! As I knew she would. She’s been
reconnoitering there for days, and after all, she chose a pile of my favorite
records last time. But she has had them, has she? How many?”

For a moment Simone’s expression remained one of affront. Then her features
broke up and her beady eyes disappeared in an enormous conspiratorial smile as
she thrust a fat finger at Paul’s chest.

“How many? Five, my friend! Six, counting le pauvre who did not survive and
whom I have—removed. But Clementine is well and proud; five lusty ones
remaining, and every one of them—imagine!—as tigré as herself! And if
Madame would excuse you—” a glitter of frost returned to her glance as she
looked at Caroline—“you could see for yourself how well she has done!”

But for Caroline, who loved cats, the thought of five newly minted kittens and
their gratified mama was too much. She looked first at Paul, then at Simone.
“Oh, please,” she begged, “if it’s not too early to disturb the mother, couldn’t I
see them too?”

Simone’s face softened. “You would care to? You are fond of cats? Perhaps
you have a dear one of your own?”

On the way into the house through the kitchen quarters Caroline explained
that, living in rooms as she did, she couldn’t keep a cat. But later, as the three of
them knelt side by side on the floor of the music-room, peering at the scraps of
tabby cathood mewling on their flannel bed while Clementine wreathed back
and forth about them, Simone urged, “But you have a sympathetic concierge
—no? And perhaps a garden where a minou could run and hunt a little?
Therefore you must have one of these. When they are more grown, you shall
choose this one or that, and I shall give it you. No, no—I insist. It is arranged!”

Caroline sat back on her heels and appealed to Paul, “Explain about the
English quarantine laws, will you, please? I’m not sure that my French is equal
to it.”

He did so, adding something which, owing to the scream of a jet plane
overhead, she did not hear properly, though it brought another wide smile to the
housekeeper’s face. She turned to commiserate, “Quel dommage! A pity, that!
But perhaps it will be as Monsieur Paul says—if you are not already fiancée, it
may be that you will choose a Frenchman for a husband and, with your home
then in France, you may keep as many cats as you please. In the meanwhile, you
will come often to see Clementine’s little family—yes?”

Rising and offering a hand to Caroline to help her to her feet, Paul promised
for her, “She shall. But in the meanwhile, Simone, what about some lunch for
us? Say in the garden-room in a quarter of an hour, which will give
Mademoiselle Neville time to freshen while I make a telephone call.”

Simone hesitated. “I should tell you—Mademoiselle Lane rang you earlier

while you were out.”

“Yes, I know. I’m ringing her back. Oh—and Simone, Mademoiselle Ursule
has had a fall, and as she is likely to be out of action for some days, I’ve
promised my cousin you’ll go over and help them out.”

Simone scowled, “That I will? Now, Monsieur Paul, haven’t I duties and
affairs enough here without that? While as for those good-for-nothing girls in
my kitchen—!”

“Nonsense,” Paul cut in. “They’ll remain good for nothing if you do all the
work yourself, as I suspect you do. You can spare an hour or two for the cottage
and I’ll take you over myself this evening. When you’ve done what’s wanted, no
doubt Monsieur Berthin will bring you back. Tomorrow you may be able to send
Claire or ’Melie instead. But someone is to go twice a day until Mademoiselle
Ursule is better. Understood?”

For a long moment Simone stood smoothing her skirt over her ample hips.
Then, her tone mutinous, she echoed, “Understood. I will go, and though not
happily, it is not in fact that I shirk the errand. You should not force me to speak
plainly, Monsieur. For though there are those whom one is glad to help when
they are in trouble, there are others—usurpers and the like—who do not deserve
—”

“That will do, Simone! Show Mademoiselle to the cloakroom now, and join
me in the garage at six this evening when I’ll take you to the cottage.”

Paul’s own tone was curt, incisive, and Caroline, following his housekeeper’s
eloquently rigid back, felt a little sorry for her. But of course she had invited his
snub and, without knowing why she should care either way, Caroline was glad
Paul had brooked no argument against the kindness from either Berthin or
Simone.

An hour later they had lunched on iced beetroot soup and delicious grilled
river trout followed by fritters containing—of all things! acacia and marrow
blossom, which Paul said were a speciality of the region.

Caroline’s surprised delight over these had led her to want to know all he
could tell her about the candying of rose and violet petals and angelica in the
mountain confiseries of which she had heard and meant to see. From there they
had gone on to the larger subject of the processing of flowers in the perfume
factories of Grasse, which in turn had produced its awkward moment when she
mentioned that her planned exploration of the Pascal estate had got no further
than the place in Villon where she had met Berthin.

“Don’t tell me my desk-wallah of a cousin offered to take time out to escort

you himself?” challenged Paul.

“He didn’t then. He asked me to go with him to meet his sister, and you know
what happened after that. But on the way up, when I told him I wanted to see the
plantations, he did suggest he should take me over them some time.”
 “Well, with a thousand hectares to cover, I wish you joy of your conducted
tour. Berthin, if you didn’t know, graduated to the Directorship of Pascal by way
of some staggeringly brilliant applied science degrees and a laboratory in
Grasse, and he can reduce Nature to a matter of test-tubes and percentages of
extraction faster and more thoroughly than anyone I know. However, you’ll
emerge far better informed on the technicalities of flower farming than if I took
you round, though if you’d settle for a smaller canvas—say the home stretch
around here—you could have my angle too if you’d care for it.”

Caroline thanked him, said she would like that and waited, expecting him to
enlarge on what his approach was. But lying back in his chair and half closing
his eyes against the vine-dappled sun of the garden-room, he said casually, “By
the way, I take it Betsy or someone will have told you what the set-up is here at
Pascal?”

“You mean—about your cousin’s having been made Director of it with sole
control? Yes.”

Still with his eyes narrowed, he addressed the glass roof and the arching vine
above it, “My cousin! How formal can you get? You and Berthin were on
Christian-name terms with each other already when I showed up, weren’t you?
And you know I meant all the details and conditions of my father’s will, without
which no one ever considers the story worth telling. You heard those too?”

“Yes, but—”

“But you weren’t all that interested?”

“I was going to say Betsy told me before I met you—”

He turned his head and fixed her with one lazy eye. “Before?”

She laughed diffidently. “All right. Before I thought we had met, and it seemed
to me to be gossip which wasn’t really my business. Or hers either, and I believe
I said so.”
 “Huh! You underrate our small-town curiosity down here. Don’t you know
that, metaphorically speaking, the Croisette is cluttered from end to end by our
eager ears pinned close to the ground? However, I can imagine you making a
virtue of the role of the studiedly deaf Wise Monkey, though you could spare a
thought for poor Betsy, canvassing sympathy for me and getting nothing but a
snub for her pains!”

Caroline began a protest, “I didn’t say I—”

But he cut her short, changing the subject to ask, “How are you making out at
the villa? Which room has Betsy given you?”

“The one at the east end. From the balcony I almost, though not quite, saw the
sun rise this morning. It’s the one where there are some books of yours, and I’ve
borrowed one of them. Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Which one?”

She told him and he nodded. “One of my more faithful stand-bys too. That’s
my favorite room as well. The other one is bigger, but that’s the one I always use
when I sleep there alone.”

“When you—?” Caroline managed to bite back the rest of her echo, but the
sheer gaucherie of it and all it implied sent a furious color racing into her
cheeks. Open-mouthed and confused, she met Paul’s full, amused gaze, but his
comment was oblique.

“You know,” he said conversationally, “it’s always seemed to me there should

have been a fourth Wise Monkey—a female one who thought no evil, whatever
the provocation!” Then he laughed. “All right, I confess I angled for it. You
shock so attractively that you’re a downright gift to irresponsibles like me. One
can pay out a line and then sit back and watch you bite ... Easy. In fact, so too
easy that one shouldn’t take advantage. So here goes—hand on heart, Mimosa’s
wilder parties have always been strictly stag; only my more benighted or
bemused guests have ever stayed the night; it has never been rented out as a
love-nest and I’ve slept there, alone by choice in your room, more times than I
can count. There! That’s my honorable amend, and if I’m willing to forgive you
for harboring nasty suspicions on no evidence at all, what about our now going
over the house as we planned and in the perfect amity and accord which we
swore to last night? Will you come?”

As he levered himself from his chair and his hand invited hers, Caroline was
glad that he couldn’t know what she was thinking. For it was that she knew now
just what the phrase “magnetic charm” meant.

In a man it was a drawing power which kept you acutely, on-your-toes

conscious of him while he was there, and made you only too aware that he took
light and warmth with him when he left. It defied analysis, except that though
there was something audaciously “little boy” to it, there was even more that was
totally adult—compelling, vital ... essentially male. Betsy had been right. Paul
had it in full, unmistakable measure. And Roy Sanders had had it too. The only
difference was that, magnetized by Roy, she had been innocent enough to
believe that it had been all and only for her; that she switched on the power with
her coming, that no one else felt the pull of it, but as long as he knew she did,
Roy was content.

But of course he hadn’t been. He’d been extravagant, profligate with it, seeing
no future in hiding a talent like that under a bushel. And Paul Pascal didn’t
either ... But after Roy, thank goodness, she was warned, forearmed. Now she
could know the momentary, heady delight of melting a little to a look, a smile or
the intimate pressure of fingers without letting them mean anything which
would carry over into pain. It seemed that, simply by being themselves, the
Roys and the Pauls of this world could hurt the Betsys but not the twice-shy
Carolines. She had nothing to fear from Paul because, thanks to Roy, she hoped
for nothing from him. And that was how she wanted it. Well ... didn’t she?

The house was much as she was prepared to find it—the smaller rooms which
Paul used looking lived-in and carelessly comfortable; the more formal ones
dignified and rather chilling. There was a magnificent hall which gave sheer up
to a domed skylight in the roof and from which a graceful double staircase led
on to the mezzanine floor, its walls hung with family portraits and some
Fragonards. On the upward journey Paul indicated them with a brief wave of his
hand, but on their way down again he took Caroline over to one which she
guessed was a painting of his mother.

It showed a woman lovely through serenity and humor rather than by feature.
It was only half-length and was dateless by reason of the filmy draping of tulle
about the shoulders and the ageless madonna style of the hair. Caroline looked
for the likeness to herself of which Betsy had spoken and saw it certainly in
Madame Pascal’s fairness of skin and hair and the clear light grey of her eyes.
But that was all. Paul’s mother, if the artist hadn’t flattered her, had done
something which Caroline thought she would count herself fortunate to achieve
when the time came—she had come to terms with middle age and made it
beautiful, as mere youth rarely was.

Paul was saying, “Maman by Therot. I believe she was about forty-five at the
time. But tell you something if you won’t misunderstand me? When you did that
guided missile act into my arms on the train, I don’t believe I saw you as much
as I—recognized you.”

“Recognized me?”

“Well, look for yourself at Maman’s coloring and her eyes!”

“Ye-es, I see, but—”

“And supposing, when you are her age, you wore your hair smoothed down
from here—so, as hers is—” his forefinger lightly indicated a parting from
widow’s peak to crown—“I’d say anyone would take this for a portrait of you.
Look again.”

She did so, but shook her head. “Oh, no, because it’s not a matter of features
nor even of coloring and hair-styles. I think your mother must have been a
lovely woman from—from inside, and that’s what makes her face more
expressive than I can ever hope mine will be.”

He shrugged. “You’ve got something there. Maman did glow, and short of
turning you inside out, I wouldn’t know whether you compete or not. But since I
loved her—this, bless you, for at least reminding me of her— ” With which, his
finger as light beneath her chin as it had been on her hair, he tilted it in order to
touch the merest feather of a kiss between her brows.

For a second time that afternoon the quick color washed and ebbed in
Caroline’s cheeks. She began, “That wasn’t—” but checked, realizing that
protest made too much of a gesture which could have meant as little to him as it
should to her. Instead she said quietly, “I’m glad—if my likeness to her helped
more than it hurt. How long ago did she die?”

“About ten years. Of a virus infection that was diagnosed too late. I’d had her
long enough to appreciate her value to me, but I hadn’t even begun to repay her
for all she had done and been.”

Caroline said, “I don’t think mothers expect repaying. I hardly remember

mine, but I know what you mean. When my father died suddenly two years ago
I was haunted for ages afterwards by all the things I told myself I might have
done for him and hadn’t, and even more by the thought of the little luxuries he
wouldn’t afford for himself, but which I meant he should have as soon as—”

She broke off at a sound from below and they both looked down into the well
of the hall to see a foreshortened Betsy standing there.

“So there you are,” she called up. “Simone unbent so far as to allow you had
lunched in the garden-room. But you weren’t there, so I gave her the slip and
galloped in here to find you.” When they went down to join her she linked her
fingers round Paul’s arm and, bracing her feet against the side of his, hung
outward at full stretch of her arms. “Paul, darling,” she coaxed childishly, “can I
beg something to drink? Something cool and long and bubbly for pretence. My
tongue is positively lolling!”

“Of course, infant, if you’ll stop playing levers and fulcrums with the help of
my person, ’Melie shall bring something to the garden-room. But you’re not
getting hard liquor between meals at this hour of the day, so don’t think it. You
got a message that I phoned to ask you to join Caroline and me for lunch, I
gather?”
 “Yes. I hadn’t rung up by then to say I’d met some of the gang in the town and
if Caroline didn’t mind, I shouldn’t be back for lunch. But before she went
home, Marie managed a note for me in some sort of English saying Ursule had
‘suffered a chute,’ which I took to mean she had had a fall somewhere, and that
you had collected Caroline at the cottage and brought her up here to lunch. You
should know,” still clinging to his arm, she addressed Caroline across him as the
three of them walked out to the garden-room, “this character simply abhors
eating alone and will go to any ends to avoid it. Well, won’t you?” she
challenged, fluttering her eyelashes at him.

He murmured, “So really tactful of you, honey, to imply that, lacking a

companion for luncheon, I scoured the hedgerows and, faute de mieux, raked in
Caroline. To pay you out, you can know that we lunched on turtle soup—as for
Lord Mayors—oysters, ortolans, sucking pig and angel food, with all the wines
to match, and didn't leave crumb or drop for you!”

Betsy giggled, “I don’t believe it! What are ortolans anyway?”

No one bothered to tell her. Over the tall glasses of iced fresh lime juice which
the maid who had served lunch brought to the garden-room at Paul’s order, they
talked about Ursule Pascal’s accident and Caroline told Betsy of her promise to
visit Ursule while she was ill.

Betsy dismissed that with an indifferent “Rather you than me,” and added in
mock suspicion, “How come, by the way, that you broke Simone’s resistance
enough for her to allow you to lunch alone with Paul?”

“Ah—” it was Paul who answered, “you see, Caroline had a diplomatic card to
play. She twined herself round Simone’s heart-strings by convincing Simone
they shared a passion for cats and kittens.”

Betsy pouted. “Well, given a hint one could worm into Simone’s favor by it,
who couldn’t put on an act about kittens?”

“You couldn’t,” he quashed. “The operative phrase was ‘cats and.’ It’s only
genuine cat-lovers who don’t regret that kittens grow up, and I daresay it hasn’t
escaped Simone that Clementine’s matronly charm leaves you cold. Caroline, on
the other hand, didn’t have to put on an act. She fell as hard for Clementine as
for the new family, with the result that Simone has invited her, in your set’s
jargon, to have herself a ball with them whenever she likes.”

‘Oh—” Betsy allowed the monosyllable and her pause to dismiss the argument
before adding, “Talking of balls, I’ve been thinking, Paul, wouldn’t it be a
smashing idea to give a party? Say as a sort of welcome for Caroline or any
other old reason—it doesn’t matter. But something more than just cocktails.
Dancing and idiotic games and maybe fireworks as a climax. What do you say?”

He regarded her lazily. “In what capacity do I ‘say’? As host or guest?”

“Well, as a bit of both. I mean, I’d give it, but if I wanted a crowd, find I
should, the villa is rather small.”

“In other words, you’d prefer this place as a stamping-ground? All right, but
only on the condition that I’m not cast as a hybrid guest. In my own house I give
the party and I play host—agreed?”

“Why, yes, if that’s the way you want it. Thanks awfully. But you’ll need a
kind of hostess too, won’t you, and I’d adore to—”

“Maybe you would, my cabbage, but—no. You and Caroline shall top the
guest list and you can vet it to see if all your buddies are invited. But if I think
the occasion calls for a, hostess, I’ll choose my own, if you don’t mind.”

“And no prize offered, I suppose, for guessing whom you’ll choose?”

“None,” he told her coolly. “It’ll be Ariane.”

“As if we couldn’t guess! But, Paul, why her?”

“Because she’s decorative to a degree; her poise is something out of this

world; she has hostess-ship down to a fine art and not least she happens to be a
friend of mine. Fair enough?”

Betsy allowed reluctantly, “I suppose so, if that’s how you feel about her, and
if being a good hostess is manipulating people like pieces on a chessboard, then
I couldn’t agree more. But the party was my idea, even if I’ve let you snaffle it,
and don’t I qualify as—as your friend too?”

His tone indulgent, “My lamb, you can have the party back if you want it and
if you can cut it to measure for the villa without tearing the place apart. And
naturally you qualify ... Though do I have to specify what as?”

She sat forward, eager eyes only for him, her lips parted. “Of course. Tell?”

“Well, then, surely as the most engaging sugar-and-spice-and-all-things-nice

that has happened to me for years—what else?” he teased her.

“Only as—? Just little girl? Oh, Paul!”

As she recoiled, her face clouding in mortification, Caroline covered up for

her by rising and thanking Paul for her luncheon. He got up too and so did
Betsy.

“When do you plan to lay on the party?” she asked him.

His arm went lightly across her shoulders. “Any time you like,” he told her.
“Come over again tomorrow and we’ll go into conference on the details—hm?”

“I’ll do that. Love to,” she said, smiling again, mollified. It was Caroline who
felt shame at second hand for her, that she should show herself so unwary, so
vulnerable to a magic which Paul scattered at random, careless of its fall-out.
And it was Caroline who looked at the word her mind had chosen—magic—and
knew with sudden devastating clarity that she had been wrong to believe that the
spell couldn’t work for her, that she was proof against it.

She wasn’t. She was within range too...


CHAPTER FIVE

IT was a week before her doctor allowed Ursule Pascal to get up, and during
that time Caroline had visited her daily, after having arrived the first morning to
find Berthin struggling defeatedly with chores which she expected Simone
would have handled for him.

Caroline had taken one glance at the pile of saucepans still encrusted with
particles of their late contents; at a stove which reeked of burnt milk; at the
kitchen floor bearing grim evidence of the hens’ trespass on it, and with a “Let
me,” had gently but firmly ousted Berthin from his labors at the grease-ridden
sink.

She cleaned it down, poured fresh hot water, stacked the washing up tidily and
set to work on it while Berthin, whom she set to sweep the floor, had related
how Paul, true to his promise, had brought Simone over the previous evening,
only for Ursule to rout her with a high-handed refusal to allow her to lay a
finger on anything in the house.

“They are at daggers drawn, these two, you understand,” Berthin had
explained. “But their hostility goes deeper than the rivalry of two excellent
housewives. Which is why, though I let Paul overrule me, I knew the idea
wouldn’t work. Nor did it. Paul dropped Simone here and left; Ursule, who was
fully awake by then, heard us talking down here, and from then until I was
forced to drive Simone back again, apologizing all the way, I was kept running
between the two of them, doing my best to tone down their tirades against each
other as I went!”

“But was Ursule well enough to argue about it?” Caroline had queried.

Berthin sighed. “My dear, you shouldn’t underrate virtuous indignation as a

stimulant. When Ursule said, ‘You hear, Berthin, I will not have that woman in
my house!’ and when Simone made it equally clear that she couldn’t wait to get
out of it, I had to fear for the effect on Ursule if I allowed the row to go on. But
of course when I returned from bundling Simone home, the reaction had set in
and I had to call. Lanvin for permission to give her more of the sedative he had
ordered for her than he thought she would need. That made him ask if she was
being kept absolutely quiet and put me to the choice of lying or admitting that
she wasn’t. I’m afraid I took the coward’s way and lied,” he finished
ingenuously.

Caroline had nodded sympathy. “I don’t blame you. But what now?” she
asked.

“Well now—” Berthin made a shelf of his linked fingers on the top of the
broom handle and rested his chin on it—“Lanvin is organizing a twice-daily call
by the district nurse, and though one may whistle in vain for domestic help in
the season, it’s just possible I can land a youngster from Villon to cope with this
kind of thing.”

“Marie—the maid at the villa, you know—may know of someone,” suggested

Caroline. “And—but I’ve told you this already!—if I can be of any help at all,
I’ll willingly come every day until your sister is better.”

“You would? But I couldn’t ask you to make a duty of it, you’re on holiday!”
Berthin protested.

“Not officially.” Because it was so easy to talk to him she had found herself
confiding her suspicion that her French wouldn’t get much practice in Betsy’s
company or in her set, and telling him that she would be really grateful for the
chance to speak it regularly to him and to Ursule who, she understood, had no
English at all.

He had demurred that the gratitude would be all on their side, but he had made
no secret of his welcome for the idea. And so, during a week when Betsy was
kept happy planning the party with Paul, Caroline went regularly to the cottage
and counted the time well spent.
 For it was, in miniature, the France her nostalgia had longed to rediscover—its
so-different domestic ways, lavish here, pared-to-the-bone economical there; its
care and its marketing and its cooking regarded without question as a fulltime
job, and whoever its nominal head, the real reins of its government in feminine
hands. She obediently shopped to Ursule’s direction—never by telephone and
by the single kilo and litre for freshness; she cooked—in butter and with wine
and bouquets garnis; she left meals in readiness for Berthin’s irregular
homecomings and carried tempting invalid trays to Ursule, and had her reward
when Ursule was extravagant with praise of her as a homemaker par excellence.

In fact, Caroline realized, Ursule had taken warmly to her from the outset. She
showed the same curiosity as Berthin had about her circumstances and within an
hour of their second meeting had been ready with the kind of confidences which
Caroline couldn’t herself have offered a comparative stranger, however
sympathetic her ear.

When she was not plying Caroline with personal questions: How much older
was she than Betsy? So little? And yet so sage by contrast! Was she engaged to
be married—no? Nor seriously courting? But with her undoubted flair for the
role, always keeping the idea of marriage in view surely?—Ursule’s recurring
theme was Berthin ... always Berthin; his goodness, his brilliance, his zeal for
work and his deplorable lack of self-seeking.

“He seems quite blind to all proper ambition, that one. Yet look, will you,” she
demanded of Caroline, “at the possibilities open to him here at Prairies Pascal! I
ask him often, ‘Aren’t you Director? Can’t you then order this and change that
by a mere stroke of the pen?’ But all he says is—what do you think?—that,
Director though he may be in name, he has never regarded himself as other than
in stewardship for Paul! For Paul! For that lightweight, that playboy, that
unprincipled gamin of whom his own father took pretty good measure when he
—! But I expect you’ll have heard about how and why Berthin was made
Director here under Gabriel Pascal’s will, won’t you?”

Caroline, more than a little embarrassed, said rather shortly that she had.
Ursule, however, avid to relate the details, only folded her hands and continued
with relish,
 “For the way of his will people have called Gabriel eccentric, unjust and
worse. But when a man finds himself with an incompetent libertine, of a son
whom, under our sentimental laws, he may not disinherit entirely, how is he to
protect his inheritance except by some such prudence as Gabriel showed by the
provision which barred Paul from a control he wasn’t fit to have? No indeed! If
you ask me, Gabriel erred well on the side of charity when he assumed there
was a faint chance that marriage might reform either his son’s morals or his
handling of the estate. For that’s how one must read the terms of the will,
though as well expect a leopard to change his spots when he takes a wife, I say!
What’s more, even Gabriel may have known he’d rest better in his grave if
Berthin did marry first and so remained in control. For you understand it was
not only the scandalous business of that girl, Fanchon Raguse, which destroyed
his father’s faith in Paul, but our fine monsieur’s failure to know his job too?”

But at that waspishness Caroline was moved to protest. “Please—!” she

began, reflecting that if she weren’t sick-visiting to Ursule, she would have been
more emphatic. “I’ve heard the gossip, of course. But I don’t know the rights or
wrongs of it, and though Paul is nothing to me—just our landlord at the villa—I
happen to like the little I’ve seen of him. And as Betsy and I can’t avoid
meeting him fairly often while we’re his tenants, when we do, I’d rather not
remember I’d been discussing his private affairs, if you don’t mind?”

For a moment Ursule appeared daunted. Then she said tartly, “That’s all very
well—if he had ever troubled himself to keep them decently private! Why,
before Gabriel died, it was public property in the region that they were at
loggerheads over the estate. And those barefaced admissions of Paul’s at that
wretched girl’s inquest! But naturally you wouldn’t know about them. You
weren’t there.”

“Were you?” Caroline posed.

“I?” Ursule bridled. “Indeed no. At the time Berthin and I were still living in
Grasse. We only came here when he took over Pascal and, I’m thankful to say,
appreciated that I couldn’t bring myself to live under the same roof as his
cousin. But what do you suppose? That, just through being a handful of
kilometres away, we could escape the scandal? Or that every busybody
acquaintance we had wasn’t ready to see we heard Paul’s shameless evidence,
word for word as he uttered it? So—

“Yes, he had told the court, he knew Fanchon well. Earlier she had been a
maid of his mother’s. And yes, on the night in question he had been alone at
Mimosa, his villa, and admittedly the girl had been to see him there.

“For what purpose? they asked him. Ah, that was her affair, and the court
would understand that he did not care to betray the confidence of une pauvre
who was dead?

“And the money found on her after her fatal accident? Yes, he had given it to
her. Why? Because she needed just that sum. For the record and for a similar
reason, he had lent her his raincoat to protect her on what threatened to be a wet
journey for her, back to Villon on her moped.

“No, he had enjoyed no guilty liaison with la Raguse. She wasn’t—if the court
would forgive the phrase—his type. Nor was she distressed when she left him;
quite the reverse, in fact ... And since the accident was due to a failure of her
machine and had had witnesses to it, he understood he was under no suspicion
of complicity in her death—?

“And so on. You see? Every answer pat, prepared, designed by their very
effrontery to twist the court round his little finger, even if they couldn’t deceive
Gabriel who knew him only too well!”

“Knew what of him?” Though Caroline despised the question, she heard
herself putting it.

Ursule shrugged. “In this case, what else than that the girl had almost certainly
been his petite amie and, tiring of her, he had simply paid her off to her
satisfaction?”

“But you say he denied it to the court?”

 “Not on oath. He was only asked to “help the inquiry’ into her admittedly
accidental death. And if it wasn’t that, it was probably something worse—”

Caroline moistened her lips. “Worse?”

“Yes. Blackmail. That, as the phrase goes, she ‘had something on him’; the
money was the price she asked but, knowing it wouldn’t be the last she would
want, he wasn’t ill pleased by the news of the disaster, though naturally cursing
the impulse which had loaned her his raincoat ... But no!”—Ursule checked as
Caroline jerked her head aside in rejection and distaste—“This you don’t want
to believe of him and nor do I, until it is proved to be true. So let’s change to a
pleasanter subject, shall we? For instance, Berthin tells me you have promised
to allow him to show you over the estate tomorrow. I's that so?”

“Yes.” Caroline spoke absently, her thoughts elsewhere; in imagination seeing

the coroner’s courtroom in Villon’s tiny Hotel de Ville where Paul Pascal, not
on trial for Fanchon Raguse’s death, had nevertheless been judged by his
peers...

“And he’ll be taking you to Grasse later, to see the processing of a crop in the
perfumeries?”

“Yes, but that is to wait until he can spare the time.”

Ursule nodded complacently. “Somehow I don’t think he will be long in

finding the time. Already he seems too fond of your company to care to miss
any chances of it. And you? You like him too? You find him congenial?”

“Very,” said Caroline, meaning it. “He’s such an easy person to talk to; so
even-tempered and tolerant and—well, altogether nice.”

“Which is much what he thinks about you! He frequently says so, as well as
praising your looks. And that’s rare in Berthin—finding himself so attracted that
he wants my sympathy for what he feels. We are very close in most things, of
course, but this kind of confidence he has given me only once before, when he
was much younger and hoped to marry a pretty little colleague of his named
Sophie Marat. But Sophie died of polio during their engagement, and as far as
he has allowed me to guess, he has never given second thoughts to marriage
since. That is, unless he is considering it again now, which would delight me ”
Pausing there as if to give Caroline time to absorb the loaded hint of that, Ursule
added on her next breath, “For you do know, don’t you, Caroline, if it isn’t too
early to hope it or that you might respond, that I, for one, would welcome the
idea with all my heart?”

Never before at the receiving end of blatant matchmaking like this, and torn
between ridicule of the absurd notion and reluctance to hurt Ursule, Caroline
hesitated before temporizing with.

“If you mean you wonder whether Berthin is thinking of asking me to marry
him, it’s a lot too early, I’d say. Why, we met only just over a week ago, which
would make it a bit—whirlwind on his part, wouldn’t it?”

“All the same, it does happen, as one knows. But even if, so far, it’s only so
much wishful thinking on my part, now I’ve put it to you, you’ll be looking at
him and thinking of him differently, perhaps?”

Caroline said gravely, “I’m afraid I may, and I don’t want to.”

“I suppose, because you think you will feel embarrassed with him? But surely
you don’t imagine I’ve let him guess what I’m able to read into his interest in
you, or that I should sound you about it? My dear, you should give me credit for
having learnt to manage him better than that! If I haven’t, then I’ve wasted my
time, all these years we’ve made our home together. But that’s something else I
ought to mention—I mean, you shouldn’t think that I’d expect to keep my
present place in Berthin’s household when he marries. For I hope I know how to
efface myself when necessary, and you wouldn’t find me coming between you
or trying to hold on to reins which ought to pass to you.”

Doubting that, feeling more than a little trapped, but touched at the sight of
Ursule’s fingertips going to hide the quivering of her lips as she made her
renunciation, Caroline said vigorously,
 “If I should happen to be around when Berthin does marry, I should think a lot
less of him if he did allow you to be completely ‘effaced’ as you call it! But
please don’t let’s assume he is thinking of me in that way already. Because
though I do like him, I want to keep him as a friend, and you too, and you do
see that might be difficult if I’ve got to watch my step with him all the time?”

“You would only need to do that if you were convinced you must refuse him,”
Ursule pointed out.

“But I think I am convinced,” Caroline said, knowing she was and, if she were
honest, why.

“All the same,” Ursule, her control regained, lit another cigarette from her
last, “you shouldn’t discount Berthin as an eligible parti, you know. Oh, yes—”
at Caroline’s quick frown—“one realizes you English pride yourselves on
putting love first and a man’s means second. But Frenchwomen are realists; they
don’t blind themselves to the truth that marriage, like everything else, runs
better on well oiled wheels. And if Berthin does secure his control of Pascal as
I’ve no doubt Gabriel intended he should, he’ll then be in a position to take
whatever he considers is his full share out of the estate—Oh, dear, you’re going
already? Betsy is picking you up and taking you down to Cannes? Yes, of
course, so you said. But I shall see you again tomorrow after your expedition
with Berthin? Good ... Run along then now. A la bonne heure!”

It was not, however, Betsy’s car which awaited Caroline on the road below. It
was Paul’s.

Opening its door for her, he explained, “I looked in at the villa, to find young
Betsy fuming to be off for some date down below. So I offered to collect you on
my own way down, d’you mind?”

Did she mind! But he couldn’t know that, as always now at sight of him,
something within her had alerted to a danger which made nonsense of the casual
question, but which her will didn’t want to escape.

As she took her seat beside him, “Are you swimming from Bar Soleil too?”
she asked.

“No. I’m lunching Ariane at the Yacht Club this morning. But there’s always
tomorrow, if you’d care to name the hour?”

“Tomorrow? No, I’m sorry. I’m not free.”

His glance slanted momentarily from its watch on the road ahead. “Prior
engagement? Or brush-off.”

“Previous engagement, of course. Berthin is going to drive me round the

estate.”

Paul murmured. “How did one guess it would be some tie-up with either
Berthin buddy or Ursule buddy? According to Betsy, you’ve spent most of your
time up at the cottage ever since you arrived, so why suppose it could be
allowed to draw blank tomorrow—or ever?”

“Well, it certainly can’t tomorrow. It’s very good of Berthin to spare the time,
and I’ve no intention of crying off something I’ve been looking forward to a lot.
Besides, if I hadn’t gone over, Ursule would have had no help at all while she
was out of action.”

“And whose fault was that? Simone knows an order when she hears one, and
if Ursule had been willing to play along, Simone would have lined up all the
help she wanted.”

Unable to refute that, Caroline shifted ground. “Anyway,” she said, “you
shouldn’t think I’m making a virtue of visiting the cottage, because if there’s
been any advantage, it’s mine. One of my main reasons for joining Betsy here
was in order to practise my French, and with Berthin and Ursule I’m hearing it
and talking in it all the time.”

“There now!” Paul’s tone affected deep concern. “Why didn’t you say you
were on a lingual course, and instead of Hornblower I’d have laid on a complete
Larousse and a set of phonetic records in your room! Meanwhile, I daresay it
hasn’t escaped you that a few million French people, other than those two, are
prattling the language all over the place? Or that even I, hybrid that I am,
managed to falter a word or two here and there and contrive to make myself
understood when I do?”

“But mostly you don’t use it with Betsy and me. Nor do the rest of her friends,
not even the French ones,” Caroline objected.

“That’s in deference to Betsy, who considers she is doing both them and the
language proud if she achieves the odd ‘Oui’ and ‘Non’ and ‘Merci bien’ now
and then. But they would speak it to you if you wanted them to. And so would I
—on occasion.”

“What occasion?”

“Well, for instance, I usually resort to French for my more romantic moments.
Because I daresay you’ll agree that, given the right time and place and a
receptive companion, little nonsenses like ‘Je t’aime’ or ‘Je t’adore’ or ‘Ma
précieuse, tu me rends fou d’amour!’ murmured in French, do acquire that extra
something of passion which English hasn’t got?”

Caroline laughed rather shakily. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, never having
been privileged to hear a Frenchman telling me I’m driving him mad with
love!”

“Stick around and you will! But Englishmen have said so—or words to that
effect?”

A pause. Then, “I’ve been engaged, if that answers the question,” she said.

This time he turned to look at her. “So? But you aren’t any longer. Whose
fault was it—yours or his?”

“Does it have to be anyone’s fault?” she countered.

 “You know quite well I meant, did he fall out of love with you or you with
him? Or wasn’t it like that at all? What was his name?”

She took the questions singly. “It was like that. And—he with me first. His
name was Roy.”

“First? You’ve forgotten him since? You’ve got over it?”

“Quite, thank you. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

“All of two years, though, it took considerably less for me to thank my stars
—and his—for our escape from a ghastly mistake.”

“And now? There’s someone else?”

She stared at the heat-shimmer which danced above the bonnet of the car.
“No.”

“And when there is, how is he going to have to measure up in contrast to

friend Roy?”

“Measure up?”

“Don’t be obtuse. I’m fishing to be told the type you think you may fall for
now, having finally written off this Roy.”

“Does anyone look for a partner by type or by a kind of Identi-kit process—so

much of this quality, so much of that?”

“I thought women were supposed to cherish an ideal in theory, even if they

settle for something more mundane in practice?”

Caroline said crisply, “You’ve been misinformed. Most of us are down to

earth enough to know there’s ‘no such animal’ as an ideal man. But we do learn
from experience, and if you insist, I’d make a guess that sometime in the future
I’m likely to marry a sensible, sober man I can trust, and be very happy doing
it.”

“In other words, no addlepates, no idlers, no potential Don Juans need apply?
But if you admit to looking for this sterling character, doesn’t that make him
your ideal type and so prove my point?”

“I am not ‘looking for him’! I only said—”

“I heard—that you’ll probably take him and even want to quite badly, if and
when he shows up, which you claim he hasn’t yet?”

“I’ve told you—no.”

“Not even an approximate sample you would be prepared to consider? No?

Well, of course the Riviera isn’t one of the best places to look. It doesn’t exactly
breed ’em staid—But there are notable exceptions, even so. What about—
Berthin, for instance?”

“Berthin?”

Paul’s brows went up. “Why not? He seems to have taken first option on your
company, and as a package-deal in—what was it?—wisdom, sobriety and
trustworthiness—I’d call him good value for your speculation at least— ”

But there he checked at Caroline’s convulsive movement. Her face scarlet, her
tone as ironic as she could make it. “Would you indeed?” she inquired. “How
perceptive of you! And how—if I may so—downright impudent as well!”

He laughed maddeningly. “Impudent? Nothing of the kind, in view of my

allegedly special and peculiar interest in Cousin Berthin’s matrimonial plans!”

“Which I suppose allows you the right to presume to make them for him, not
to mention mine for me?”

Airily, “Not at all. On so short an acquaintance as ours that would be

—impudent. Besides, ask yourself—why should I do Berthin’s courting for him,
except by reason of my reputation for having too much know-how and even
more practice? But I didn’t do my army service for nothing, and I’m merely
employing the military tactic known as ‘appreciating the situation.’ In other
words, gauging what the enemy may be up to, before he’s up to it, if you see
what I mean?”

“I think I do.” Not needing to ask, yet hoping he wouldn’t confirm it, Caroline
said, “In this case, the enemy being Berthin?”

The car purred up the last short street, out on to the Croisette and whispered to
a halt at the garish entrance to the Bar Soleil before she got a reply. Then,
leaning to open the door on her side, enabling her to alight, Paul said, “Of
course. Who else?” and swept effortlessly into the stream of traffic going his
way towards the Yacht Club and his luncheon date with Ariane Lescure.

The following day found Caroline more than once in regret for her lost chance
to explore the estate alone, at leisure and on foot.

For Paul’s strictures on Berthin as a guide had been shrewd. Anxious as he

was to show her everything of interest, he somehow contrived to make the
expedition an academic exercise in topography and facts and figures, inviting
her to marvel at them, rather than at the sheer beauty and fragrance of the
myriad flowers and herbs and shrubs which marched across the levels towards
the horizon or kept their regimented ranks along the terraced hillsides.

Of a comparatively small square of violets, cultivated in the shade of silver-

foliaged olives and dormant now under their leaves, he told her, “We crop them
from January to March, or into April if the season is late. Sixty years ago the
whole region used to send them to the perfumeries by the two hundred thousand
kilograms and at three times the price of jasmine. But they don’t process well,
and Parma Violet as a perfume is out of fashion, which makes it unprofitable to
grow them in quantity now,” said Berthin.
 And of the lavender which since late July had purpled the hill slopes on which
it grew—“It extracts, on average, at about a kilo of essence from a hundred and
seventy-five kilos of blossom, and it must be distilled quickly, answering only
to steam distillation.”

And again, of the roses, at their best in May and mostly blown now, though
here and there still gay—“A good season’s average is about three thousand
kilos’ weight to the hectare with, in turn, a thousand or so buds to each kilo.
After planting, they need comparatively little attention or watering. But they
don’t crop until the end of their second year, and even then after a cold winter,
ten to fifteen per cent must be replaced—” and so on until, around noon, he
drew the estate car on to a natural lay-by formed by a bluff of rock and
suggested they should eat the picnic lunch they had brought with them.

Caroline, feeling slightly bludgeoned by statistics, was only too glad to agree.
And while they shared Ursule’s excellent paté, crusty French bread and dairy
butter, washed down by a bottle of regional wine and followed by tiny, sweet
green grapes as dessert, Berthin began to talk without reserve about Paul, and
she was listening eagerly ... too eagerly for any further pretence that, for the
oldest reason in the world, she wasn’t greedy to share talk about him and to look
at him through eyes other than hers.

Pouring more wine for her and draining the bottle into his own glass, Berthin
said, “It’s good to dawdle a while. But when you feel you’d like to make a
move, I propose to show you the plantage Fragonard, which is Pascal owned
but which lies off the estate proper, some kilometres toward Grasse.”

“Fragonard? That’s the mimosa plantation, isn’t it?” Caroline asked.

“Yes. The direct way to it runs up from behind your villa, but we can strike
across to it from here. Of course, as a spectacle it’s at its best in January and
February, which is when they hold the mimosa fetes in the town. At this time of
year, I’m afraid, it’s only a source of anxiety, one of the worst headaches I have,
owing to its liability to fire at a touch.” Berthin paused before adding, as if
along the same line of thought, “In fact you could say the situation regarding
Fragonard pinpoints the whole unnecessary issue between my cousin and me,
showing up as it does the shortcomings of my stewardship for him and his
laisser faire attitude, when it isn’t downright obstructive, which it sometimes
is.”

Caroline said, “That’s how Ursule said you regard yourself—as a steward for
Paul. But you’re too modest, surely? You are more than that?”

“Not as I see matters. Nor, I imagine, as Paul’s father foresaw them when he
made his will. Because though he insisted on the terms of it against the advice
of his attorney, I’m convinced he only intended it as a kind of last-ditch stand on
a false dignity he had no right to, and which Paul, into the bargain, knew he
hadn’t.”

Caroline’s brows drew together. “I don’t understand. I thought Ursule said he

was determined to punish Paul for his part in some scandal and also for his
laxity or outright inefficiency on the estate?”

Berthin frowned. “It’s not the first time Ursule has perpetuated that version,
though knowing that at least part of it isn’t true. Which makes it very wrong of
her and without excuse, except, I’m afraid, the extent to which she feels she has
to range herself on my side—against Paul.”

“You mean—” Caroline’s voice was unsteady with hope—“the story about
Fanchon Raguse wasn’t true?”

“Ah, that part—No, Paul himself has seen to it that he is the only one to know
the rights and wrongs of that. But for the rest, as he realizes well enough, it was
simply my uncle’s way of paying him out for daring to be right in a single issue
in dispute between them, where he, Gabriel, had been wrong.”

Much as she would rather have had the sad, ugly shadow of Fanchon Raguse
dispelled, Caroline felt relief wash over her. It was not all, but it was something,
that Paul was not wholly the dross which Ursule’s malice against him would
have her believe. She told Berthin quietly, ‘Tm glad about that. But what was
this clash between Paul and his father?”
 Berthin hesitated. “You may find it a trifle technical,” he warned.

“I shan’t.” After the morning’s array of indigestible facts, give or take a few
more and what matter? And if it vindicated Paul...

“Well then, you’ll recall the big terraced jasmine plantation which steps down
south of Maison Pascal itself?”

As Caroline nodded—“So!” he continued. “A couple of seasons before

Gabriel died, that was newly planted with fresh stock at Paul’s recommendation
of the suitability of the site and wholly under his direction. But in its first year it
fell victim to a form of root rot which locally they call mouffe and which we, in
the analytical laboratories, known as rosellinea necatrix—a killer which takes
hold like wildfire with two main known causes. The most likely, a failure to
clear the soil before planting of every vestige of old roots of, say, fig-trees or
olives and the like; the other, the importation of the disease in the grafts
obtained from the specialist nurseries of such things. You understand ‘graft’, I
take it?” Berthin paused to ask.

“Oh, yes.”

“Good. Alors, Gabriel chose to jump to the obvious, accusing Paul of planting
in sour ground. Paul, denying this, insisted that the nursery at Vesubie or Nervi,
I forget which now, should send the suspect parent stock for analysis, and in the
event he was proved right. The nursery had to accept liability; the plantation
was grubbed up, the stock burnt, the soil disinfected, re-set with healthy cuttings
—and you see it now, ripe for a bumper crop before long. It was only Gabriel
who couldn’t put the disaster behind him, and seemingly never did until the day
of his death.”

“But he ought to have been grateful to Paul over the whole thing!” Caroline
protested.

“Ought—yes. But I think gratitude wasn’t in his nature, where his own
judgment had been proved at fault. Also I can picture his chafing over having
pooh-poohed, according to Paul, the first tell-tale signs of mouffe into which
Paul read instant danger and acted at once.”

“Yet surely all this must be pretty generally known by now, mustn’t it? By all
Paul’s friends and by everyone on the estate?” puzzled Caroline.

“Strangely, no. Or perhaps not so strangely. The case, I remember, went

through as Prairies Pascal against the nursery, nothing personal about it. So if
Paul didn’t publicize his part in it, you may be sure his father didn’t. And
whether that was Paul super-loyal, or Paul digging in his heels in his own brand
of stiff-necked pride, could be anyone’s guess. Around here at the time there
was probably talk on both sides. But I was in Grasse and, for one, shouldn’t
know the truth of it, except through my laboratory connections and through
taxing Paul with it since I’ve been in control here.”

Caroline said slowly, “You mean—Paul allowed Monsieur Pascal to shelter

behind him, and that—that unfair clause in the will, I mean—was his reward?”

“Yes, though you shouldn’t forget that between that quarrel and my uncle’s
death, there was l’affaire Raguse which, in view of Paul’s attitude over it, did
him no good, and which, if the old man needed to justify to himself the petty
revenge he intended, could give him excuse enough. But it was merely
pettiness, of course. For one can only suppose that, in framing that clause as he
did, he must have realized he was leaving the door wide open for Paul to nullify
its effect exactly when he chose.”

“But not if you married before Paul, surely?”

Berthin smiled. “Ah, but I think my uncle was shrewd enough to take a chance
on the improbability of that! Oh, yes, I’ve been in love—admittedly. But only
once, and a long time ago. And I'd say it could hardly escape anyone that I’m
too set in my bachelor ways to think of marrying now—hm?”

“I think Ursule still hopes you will,” Caroline offered tentatively.

“No.” He shook his head. “If she says so, that's only her ambition for me
speaking, bless her. That—or a hostility towards Paul which I’m afraid she
rather enjoys. But she knows very well that I’m happy enough as I am. Or
rather, as happy as I hope to be again, once I’m free of all this—” he waved an
expressive hand at the landscape—“and as happy as Paul should be, to be well
rid of me.”

“You mean you didn’t want to take on the responsibility of the estate?”

“Want it? Mon dieu, no! My dear girl, I’m a scientist of sorts, a laboratory
botanist; a test-tube and microscope chap, not a practical flower farmer! Even
now I don’t pretend to know what it’s all about, and if I fool my latest engaged
unskilled laborer, that’s about all I do!”

“What nonsense!” Caroline exclaimed. “Look at all you’ve told me about the
crops this morning, for instance, and say if you dare that you don’t know what
it’s about!”

“Yes—facts, figures, they can be learned. And so can desk work. But
husbanding soil, seeding, planting, cherishing, harvesting—the how, when and
where of it all—and even the managing of labor, they clamor for the kind of
flair Gabriel had; of which Paul has more than any man in the region and which
simply isn’t in me. So you see, if all Gabriel did want was to administer a sharp
rap to Paul’s self-esteem, as far as the estate was concerned, his decision to put
me in control of it could hardly have been more ill-advised.”

Caroline said stoutly, “If you ask me, he knew very well what he was doing
when he chose you. He couldn’t have picked anyone more conscientious or
loyal, at any rate.”

“Mm.” Berthin shook crumbs from their picnic plates and began to repack the
hamper. “But a concern like Pascal isn’t run on loyalty alone, as Paul doesn’t
fail to make clear.”

“And he doesn’t help, does he?”

“Not noticeably! Though, except when he contrives to drive my patience to its

limit, I manage to tell myself that that’s his pride making its stand, and that if I
cared for Pascal as he does, I’d probably react in much the same way.”

Feeling she could hug him for his generous toleration of that, Caroline said, “I
think I can understand it too. But surely he must know you would welcome his
co-operation if he would give it? Because you would, wouldn’t you?”

“Welcome it! What do you think? And if he doesn’t know now, it’s not for
want of telling. But when it comes to building walls of hostility, he and Ursule
have nothing to teach each other, and even if he wanted to, I doubt if he could
bring himself to look for a way over or round his. So I imagine my only hope of
release from the whole set-up will have to be the news that he is going to marry
—and the sooner the better, say I. Except that—”

As Berthin broke off Caroline was scrambling to her feet and brushing larch
cones and pine needles from her skirt. “Except, that?” she prompted.

A Gallic shrug. “Just that I’m old-fashioned enough to hope he doesn’t solve
matters by marrying a divorcée, which seems likely,” Berthin said, and led the
way back to the car.

Privately Caroline found the plantage Fragonard disappointing. For

“mimosa”—however deceptively in early August!—conjured an inevitable
picture of a cloud of gold against a background of ineffable green, of puffballs
feathering pollen, of nostalgic perfume. But of these the trees’ dull grey stems,
withered and browning fronds and flat pea-pod fruits seemed to have neither
memory nor hope.

She said so to Berthin, and he agreed with her that at this time of year only the
extent—rank upon rank of mature trees cluttered by a daunting undergrowth of
self-sown seedlings—was worth remark.

“Of course,” he said, “I ought to have a small army at work on it, clearing it.
But I simply can’t spare the labor, so what will you? And look at this—”
Stooping, he picked up a glinting piece of glass and offered it to her to touch
before putting it into his pocket. “Almost red-hot, you see? Asking for fire,
though at least it’s rash enough to give itself away by winking at one, which the
half-stubbed cigarette butts don’t. However, as Paul doesn’t tire of reminding
me, it’s all my headache and only mine.”

They returned again to the car and were about two kilometres on the way
home when the engine checked on a slight slope, took heart again at the
pressure of Berthin’s foot on the accelerator but finally died a few paces further
on.

“What the—” he puzzled, and was about to alight to investigate as Caroline

drew his attention to the petrol gauge', its finger pointing “Zero.”

“Empty? That’s not possible!” he protested. But it was, and lacking a spare
can, they had no choice but to hope to hail some passing knight-errant who had.

The countryside was drowsing in siesta and they had some time to wait, doing
so at a strategic bend in the road from which they could watch both ways along
it for some distance.

The first driver who came along could not help them. The second ignored
their signals. “Thinks we’re trying to thumb a lift!” grumbled Berthin and, at the
sound of a third a long way off, stood wide-legged in the roadway, prepared to
flag it down.

But the urgent semaphore of his arms was not needed. At its driver’s first sight
of him the long open car slowed, stopped, and it was Paul who lifted his sun
glasses to wave a salute at Caroline, seated on a knoll at the roadside, and to
lean out to speak to his cousin.

“In trouble? What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing much. But, idiot that I am, I’ve run out of petrol. Have you any to
spare me?”

“Yes, there’s a can with a litre or two in it in the boot.”

 “May I borrow it?”

“Naturally.”

The can was handed over. But as Caroline made to accompany Berthin back to
where they had abandoned the car, he said, “No need. If you’ll wait here, I’ll fill
up and come along for you,” and went off down the road with his burden.

Meanwhile Paul, back in his driving seat, was surveying Caroline on her perch
with a speculative eye.

“Me,” he said, using a French idiom but speaking English, “I’m on my way to
disport myself in Nice in whatever way gives. You wouldn’t care to switch
conducted tours and chauffeurs and come along?”

“Of course not! What do you expect?”

“Laying it on with a trowel whose company you prefer? Ah, well, I suppose it
only goes to show—”

“Show what?”

Switching on his engine, he listened critically to its purr. Then, his smile
seraphic, “Just that apparently a hoary gimmick like running out of petrol can
still work. And though the timing needs polish—I mean, where’s the future in
shanghaiing a girl on a public highway in full afternoon?—it does rather look to
the naked eye as if the enemy isn’t doing too badly on the whole...”

A few seconds later his car was no more than a speeding arrow pointing at the
road ahead of it; then a mere blur in the distance, a sounding horn, then nothing
at all.

CHAPTER SIX

Neither Berthin nor Ursule were at Paul’s party. But to judge by the crowd of
cars on the gravelled courtyard in front of his house and in the paved yard
beside it, he, Ariane Lescure and Betsy between them had invited everyone else
they could possibly know.

Small as was Betsy’s, “bubble-gum,” there was scarcely room to park it, and
as they walked towards the house Caroline teased, “I wonder if the night-spots
of Cannes and Nice are asking themselves what can have decimated the
population? Anyway, I thought you despised Ariane's habit of never giving a
party without having the world and his wife at it?”

“Only when, after giving you to understand she’s bidding you to a cosy get-
together with, say, a couple of other people over a bottle of vin ordinaire and a
jacket potato, you arrive to find the champagne and caviare flowing,” Betsy
retorted. “But as soon as Paul took this party out of my hands and insisted on
holding it here, I knew he meant it to be quite something. No fireworks though,
worse luck, because of the stray sparks firing the near plantations. So he’s laid
on a terrific floor show for around midnight instead—Oh dear, there’s Ariane
queening it on the terrace already. There—in that slinky fishtail thing ... And
with another different man! But no, I believe he’s only that Polish assistant of
hers. Witold Czinner. He doesn’t signify, though I suppose her not having a
man-sized escort in tow means she’s going to concentrate on Paul the whole
evening. She would!”

“Well, considering he asked her to act as his hostess, what do you expect?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. When she isn’t monopolizing him she’ll be
making a favor of loaning him out. Because she’s just a—a Gorgon’s head
where he’s concerned. Or do I mean a harpy?” Betsy queried vaguely as they
reached the terrace.
 People were being served with cocktails there, as they were in the hall beneath
the roof-high dome and sitting on both wings of the staircase. A salon which
Paul had told Caroline he rarely used now had been cleared for dancing, though
as yet only one or two couples were on the floor. A buffet supper was laid out in
the dining room which Paul did use; there were banked flowers everywhere;
light and color blazed, except in the garden room and on its adjoining terrace,
where a few chairs were discreetly grouped in twos in the shadows cast by the
vine which shaded and cooled both room and terrace by day.

Dress was by people’s individual choice, ranging through a gamut of styles

from Ariane’s figure-conscious silver lame to Betsy’s green satin lounging pants
and the comparative simplicity of Caroline’s choice of a boat-necked two-piece
in thick white surah for the way it enhanced her sun tan, now almost the match
of Betsy’s.

Paul’s male guests were variously in open-necked silk shirts, matelot stripes
and tropical suitings. Paul himself wore a white dinner jacket, and at a casual
glance around her Caroline thought the only man in sight too formally dressed
was the Pole, Witold Czinner, who was in black that was greening a little from
long use.

It was not long before she and Betsy were separated and gradually the pattern
of the party shifted and altered, fewer people lingering in the velvet dusk
outside, more going to dance in the salon or the hall or to clamour round the
buffet for drinks.

Caroline found herself gratifyingly in demand. She danced with some of the
young men she had met on the beach with Betsy; once with Paul, savoring the
pleasure of that, trying to make it last, and with a stranger to whom Ariane
introduced her, who took her to supper at the buffet and to a mildly flirtatious
interlude on the darkened terrace before they danced again and parted.

It was between dances a little later that she found herself standing next to
Witold Czinner, whom she had met briefly one morning in Ariane’s shop on the
Croisette. His greeting to her now, as then, was a heel-clicking bow low over her
hand and as he drew forward chairs for her and for himself he said in French, “I
ought to ask you for the courtesy of the next dance, Mademoiselle. But I’m
afraid my waltzing is of the school of the Blue Danube and though, even in
Warsaw, I daresay the young people are doing these rock things now, I’ve never
had much heart for practicing them, I’m afraid.”

Caroline said, “I’m glad you don’t want to dance. I was rather hoping to sit the
next one out. Is it a long time then, Monsieur, since you were in Warsaw
yourself?”

“Too long. I have been in France for ten, eleven years, and in Germany before
that.”

“But you plan to go back to Poland, some time?”

He shrugged. “We of Eastern Europe can only allow ourselves to hope,

Mademoiselle. We do not ‘plan’, you understand?”

“Yes ... I’m sorry. Are you alone here, or have you your family with you?”

His sad, absent eyes followed a couple drifting by, hand-in-hand. “I am a

widower, Mademoiselle. I lost my bride of a few weeks before I came out of
Poland, and such family as I have—two elderly parents and a brother—are still
there. But yet, I do hope to go back—when I have saved enough money to keep
myself and them while I put to work the slow machinery which may enable me
to bring them all out with me next time. Meanwhile I must not complain. I have
a job which I have come to love, even though it wasn’t originally mine.”

“What are you really, then?” Caroline asked.

“A designer of ceramics. You appreciate fine china, perhaps?”

“I know very little about it, though I can recognize the types most people can.
Our own Staffordshire, for instance, and Dresden, and hadn’t you some Meissen
figures in the Salon Ariane window the other day?”
 His face lighted up. “So you knew our Meissen orchestra? That’s good. But
alas, it is not complete, and can you guess, I wonder, why I put as many figures
as we have in the window?”

“Well, in the hope of selling them, surely?”

“On the contrary, in the hope that someone who has one or other of the figures
and instruments we haven’t may offer them for sale to us, completing our
collection. Although if that happened, I should be sad. For then Madame, rightly
enough, would insist that I push the sale of the whole orchestra, and for me it
would be like parting with dear, familiar friends—Madame!”

The last word was occasioned by the approach of Ariane. Springing to his feet,
he offered her his chair, for which she rewarded him with a drawl of a smile—
there was no other word for it—and a “Thanks, Witold,” in her dark honey
voice.

Seated, she looked up at him appealingly. “That, my friend, was only just in
time to save my ankle-bones parting from my leg-bones! And now I wonder if
you’ll do something else for me—find my cape-thing that I’ve abandoned
somewhere? You remember, the bit of fur nonsense I was wearing earlier? I
haven’t an idea where it may be, so don’t trouble yourself too much, and don’t,
please, go at all if—” she glanced from him to Caroline—“I’m breaking
anything up?”

“Of course not, Madame. Mademoiselle Neville and I were only discussing
fine china, and if she will excuse me—?” Another formal bow asked permission
of Caroline and he moved away.

Ariane murmured, “Poor Witold. He’s so dedicated and so loyal though one
could wish he didn’t make such a thing of his statelessness. Sometimes he
makes me feel the rest of us haven’t the right to be even normally gay. But what
can one do for him? He’s no social mixer, and the only other way in which one
is tempted to try to help him, he won’t allow. I mean, of course, offering him
money to get this dream of his of returning to Poland really going. But he won’t
hear of it at all.”
 “Have you tried, then?” asked Caroline.

“Oh, yes. But he only says, ‘Madame, you pay me the salary I am worth to
you, and that is enough’. Too proud, you see, though one can’t help respecting
him for it. However, searching for my rag of mink is going to keep him happy
and busy for a little while, and you’re going to forgive me, aren’t you, for using
it as an excuse to prise you away from him so that I could have a little talk with
you—about Betsy?”

“With me? About Betsy? Why?” Sheer surprise made Caroline’s tone blunt.

“Well—” both the gesture of Ariane’s hand and her smile were apologetic
—“simply, I suppose, because for her own sake it’s time it was said, and
because it would take more malice than I hope I possess to say it to her face. So
I thought it kinder to drop a tiny hint to you instead. After all, you’re good
friends as well as cousins and much of an age. So I argued you must know ways
of teasing her out of it without wounding her feelings too much, which I might
very well do if I tried broaching it myself.”

Knowing, but needing to play for time, Caroline asked, “Teasing her out of
what?”

“Oh, my dear! Of course I mean this—how do you describe it—‘carrying a

torch for Paul’—or is my slang out of date? Because she really is being so very
foolish about him, and with him that it’s becoming quite embarrassing to anyone
who is even ordinarily fond of her, as I am.”

Instantly Caroline’s hackles went up in defence of Betsy. Feeling the small lie
was justified, she said, “Well, she has never embarrassed me. I admit I wish she
didn’t find him as attractive as she seems to, but that’s for her sake. And if you
mean Paul himself is embarrassed by her—”

“But naturally he is, however cunningly he conceals it! This evening, for
instance, he has only had to turn his head to find her there, poor lamb, owl-eyed
and beseeching and—”
 “I was going to say.” Caroline cut in, “that since most men don’t lack for ways
of brushing off attentions they don’t want, I should have thought it could be left
to Paul to discourage Betsy whenever he wants to. If he wants to, that is.”

“Now, now,” Ariane chided, “that’s not fair. You really can’t accuse him of
encouraging Betsy’s foolish schwärmerei for him. For Paul, give him his due, is
only himself—always. By which I mean he doesn’t consciously turn on the kind
of fatal power that seems to act on pretty, impressionable zanies of Betsy’s type
as an arc-light hypnotizes rabbits. He just has the brand of charm that gets him
home without his even trying. Surely you realize that?”

Grimly true as she knew it to be, Caroline continued to root for Betsy. “All the
same,” she insisted, “he can’t be so very irked by her crush on him, or he would
avoid her or snub her. But he doesn’t do either; on the contrary he’s always as
relaxed and pleasant and at ease with her—as he is with me, for instance.”

“Pouf! Merely the good manners that come easy to him! And I don’t suppose
you claim he goes out of his way to seek her company, do you?” For the first
time there was an edge to Ariane’s tone.

Caroline said dryly, “We’re agreed, aren’t we, that he doesn’t have to seek it?
She thrusts it on him. But I don’t think he needs protecting from her, and if I do
say anything to her, it’ll only be because I don’t want her to get hurt by building
any more hopes on his perfectly normal friendliness than—again for instance—I
do.”

All smiles again, Ariane murmured, “Oh, dear, I must have expressed myself
badly. Of course, Paul can look after himself; he’s had enough experience of
little lovelorns taking him too seriously. All I meant was that I, for one,
shouldn’t want to be there if his patience suddenly gave out and he forgot to be
polite with Betsy. I do so hate watching anyone lose face ... don’t you? However
—” an arch nod and a confident tap on Caroline’s knee—“I know you’re going
to find some kind of way of persuading Betsy she is wasting her time—And
now, chérie, do you realize we’ve turned into a couple of wallflowers since
we’ve been sitting here? Not an unattached male in sight. So let’s go and see
where they're lurking, shall we? Where shall we try first?”
 “Oughtn’t you to wait until Monsieur Czinner comes back with your cape?”
Caroline asked.

“My dear, you don’t suppose I really wanted it? It was only an excuse to get
rid of him. No, he’ll run it to earth and bring it to me wherever I am. That’s the
best of Witold, you see—the way he can make a sacred responsibility of the
smallest job I ask him. Meanwhile, I’m for some air on the terrace and the
chance of finding a man there who will ask me to dance. What about you?”

But the terrace was quiet and deserted. Ariane’s hand tucked companionably
into the crook of Caroline’s elbow, they strolled its length in the velvety
darkness and turned the corner of the house, only to draw equally blank there.

Ariane halted. “Men!” she began in mock disgust. “One has only to provide a
bar and they lose all sense of the romantic. You’d think some of them at least
would be téte-a-téte out here—”when suddenly from the forecourt the engine of
a car snarled into noisy life. Someone was leaving the party early, and as the
driver manoeuvred for space his headlights raked the terrace from end to end;
steadied, and focused on the garden-room for long enough to pluck from the
darkness the two figures within.

Paul. Betsy, her back to the waist-high trellis which was the room’s open side;
Paul’s rangy height dwarfing hers as he faced her, very close. He was smiling
down at her; then his hands went to the crook of her elbows, drawing her to him.
Her slight body curved to his; her fingers linked behind his neck. Then their
faces merged to one outline as they kissed and the beam of light slid away from
them; wavered, then abandoned them for good as the car turned at an angle and
was driven away.

At Caroline’s side Ariane drew her breath in a sharp hiss and her fingers bit
into the flesh of Caroline’s arm. All tolerance gone from her tone, positive
venom in it now, she said,

“Did you see? That was Paul—with Betsy! And he was—He was encouraging
the—the little fool! Inviting her to kiss him ... kissing her!”
 “Yes,” said Caroline. And knew, as Ariane whipped about and left her without
another word, that with that simple confirmation of what they had both seen, she
had innocently given Betsy and perhaps herself too into the hands of an enemy.
From now on, she guessed, Ariane was going to drop her well-found mask of
kindly patronage of Betsy. For Betsy, in Paul’s arms and kissing him at his
invitation, had suddenly turned rival to Ariane, whose property he was. Ariane’s
outburst had said that only too plainly, and Caroline’s brief satisfaction at her
discomfiture fast became a compassion and apprehension for Betsy which was
equalled only by anger with Paul.

If he wanted to flirt on the side without Ariane’s knowledge, why couldn’t he

pick on someone his emotional size and weight? Some girl in his set—and there
must be plenty!—who knew all the rules and who could kiss and ride away as
lightly as he could. Not Betsy, who had chosen to make him her dawn and her
dark, her rain and her sun! Not Betsy, whose too ardent response to his careless
love-making was a cheating of another man while he couldn’t hit back, as Paul
must surely know!

Meanwhile, to Caroline anger brought its own reward. While she felt it, it
overlaid the ache of her own loving, and if only she could make it last until she
could convince Betsy there was no future in loving Paul Pascal it might teach
her the utter folly of it too...

She allowed the click of Ariane’s heels to recede completely, then moved out
of sight and earshot of the garden-room and smoked most of a cigarette before
returning to the house.

There Betsy and Paul, as far as she could see, had not reappeared; Ariane was
dancing with a stranger and she herself was quickly claimed for a visit to the bar
by some of Betsy’s cronies, the two students from Grasse, Henri and André,
among them. She had met them both several times since that first evening in
Ariane’s flat, and now, as then, it was too evident that Henri ought not to drink
much more.

“I don’t know why I trouble myself with ce gosse. Whenever we go to a party,

me, I have to stick to Vichy water so that I can drive him home, and where is the
fun in that?” André grumbled in an aside to Caroline. And another cognac for
Henri later, “Look, for his own good I’d better get him out of here. So if I can
persuade him to bring that girl he is with out on to the terrace to get some air,
will you come along too and make a foursome of it?”

Henri, however, had reached an obstinate stage and when he did agree to make
the move he insisted on bringing along a large unwieldy parcel which he
retrieved from where he had parked it earlier, behind a bank of flowers in the
hall.

As they went out to the terrace it pleased him to make a mystery of it, and the
other three thought it best to humor his mood by hazarding wild guesses as to its
contents, which were, he hinted darkly, something which Betsy had promised
him, only to let him down. So he had brought along his own, whether Paul liked
it or not. There—!

With which cryptic utterance and at his second clumsy attempt he slit the cord
which tied the parcel, spread the paper and revealed a pile of gaudy-sticked
fireworks of all kinds.

“Imbecile!” André had stared, then lunged. But not before Henri had snatched
up three or four crackers and retreated out of reach. André shouted again,
“Imbecile, ne nigands pas! Don’t play the fool with those things in your state!
You know what a stray spark can do in the region in this drought; what do you
think Paul banned them for, huh?”

But Henri only bunched his prize in the crook of one elbow while he fumbled
in his shirt pocket for, presumably, matches. Finding them, he struck one; it
petered out and André moved forward again. But Henri sidestepped into the lee
and shadow of the house; struck three or four matches together, their small
flame lighting up his fatuous smile as he applied them to one of the crackers he
held and called, “Et maintenant—Caroline! Junie! Attention!” and made to fling
it, spitting flame, among the pile of fireworks at the others’ feet.

But before he could do so his arm was caught from behind and wrenched
backwards until he yelped. The spent cracker dropped from his grasp, to be
ground underfoot by Paul’s heel while Paul’s grip on him held fast.

Intent, the other three had not seen Paul arrive until he was there, his glance
sweeping them briefly before, shifting his hold to the scruff of Henri’s shirt, he
manhandled him firmly out of the shadow and over to the heap of fireworks.

“What are these things doing here?” Paul demanded, and when Henri was
silent, shook him.

“Well?”

“They’re mine. I brought them with me.”

“To my house without permission? To my party? Why?”

Henri, tipsy as he was, still had wit enough to try truculence. “To set light to
them, of course. To put a bit of life into your dreary party. What’s any party,
without a few sparks to pep it up? And what are fireworks for?”

“I’d like,” said Paul, in full command of the situation, “to demonstrate some
of the uses to which I could put them if I were as big a fool as you and only
about half as ill-mannered. But that’s by the way. Since you brought them and
you’re not going to entertain anyone by pipping them off around here, you can
take them back where they came from, can’t you? And take yourself too. For,
host or no host, I assure you that in the circumstances I’ve not the slightest
compunction about slinging you out. So get going, will you? And I mean—
now!”

But as Henri was released with a suddenness which buckled his knees and sent
him sprawling, André sprang forward.

“We came by car, Paul, and he can’t be allowed to drive. Not in his
condition!”

“Of course he can’t. But that’s his problem—if it isn’t as much yours for
letting him get this way.”

“I did not let him,” André protested. “I’m not his nursemaid!”

“No? All the same, I wouldn’t have said any of you looked to me to be
bending over backwards to discourage him in this particular caper—” Paul’s toe
stirred the pile of fireworks. “But no—” as André stooped to gather them up,
“let him do that, and if he drops as many as he manages to hang on to, he can
come back for them and consider himself lucky I don't make him cart them
away one by one. What’s more, if you’re not prepared to see him home, he’ll
have to get there under his own steam. Let him walk.”

“Walk to Grasse? It’s all of nineteen kilometres!”

“What of it? It’d do him good, clear his head.”

“No, I’ll take him,” said André. ‘Sorry, Paul, about this. But really we others
—the girls and I—weren’t in on this firework lark, you know.”

“That’s all right,” said Paul shortly. “Come back when you’ve dropped him, if
you want to.”

“No, I’ll call it a day, I think. But thanks all the same—and for a smashing
party. Good night, Caroline. Good night, Junie. Be seeing you—”

But Junie, it seemed, had judged discretion to be the better part, leaving
Caroline alone with Paul, who dusted off his hands in a gesture of dismissal of
the other two, then turned to her.

“Was that true—you weren’t egging on that moron to show off his pretty
sparks?”

“Of course we weren’t. We’d brought him out here to take your advice for him
—to see if it would clear his head. None of us knew what was in his wretched
parcel until he opened it and showed us.”
 “But I daresay you regard the whole thing as a storm in a teacup and me as a
monster of intolerance?”

“Nothing of the sort. We all knew it was criminally idiotic of Henri, but he
wouldn’t listen to André. It took your authority to turn on the heat, and of course
you were justified. Though I must say— ”

Paul waited. “You must say?”

“That though I was glad you took the stand you did, it seemed a bit out of
character, I thought.”

“Out of my character? You interest me. What do you mean by that?” He

waited again, and when she did not reply, “You’re not telling? Never mind,
we’ll refer it back and I daresay you will before the night is out. What would
you like to do now?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“Then you can redeem a promise you made me. Come and smell jasmine on
the night air with me. How are your feet clad for walking?”

She indicated her medium-heeled sandals. “Adequately. But—” What was her
anger against him worth, when she wanted so much to go with him wherever he
invited or led?

“Spare the ‘buts.’ Come along. You can’t be said to have lived until you’ve
smelt jasmine on an August night. Preferably by moonlight, but one can’t have
everything, and there’ll be other nights. Meanwhile, this way—”

To reach the plantation they had to cross the forecourt and the roadway
beyond. There a gate opened on to a path, ribbed across with logs for foothold,
which led away into the darkness between rank upon rank of jasmine plants so
prodigal of blossom that it might have been a blanket of snow laid over them.
The land was terraced downward, each wide strip buttressed by stout clay walls;
the path stepping down by way of two or three stairs made of logs or slabs of
stone at each drop. At the lowest point of the plantation it was divided from the
neighboring smaller one, of tuberoses also in full blossom, by the width of a ha-
ha, dry now but spanned by a sturdy log bridge where Paul halted.

“This is as far as we’ll go. The tuberoses are mean with their scent at night—
day girls, all. But you get the idea about jasmine, I hope? Really quite
something, isn’t it?”

Leaning elbow to elbow with him on the handrail of the bridge, Caroline
threw back her head, her nostrils greedy for the delight of the fragrance all about
her.

“It’s out of this world,” she breathed.

“Isn’t it? Or I’ve always thought so. And yet, you know, it’s lazy by day.
Between here and Cannes there are a score or so of jasmine farms, but in the
daytime you’d never know it by scent alone.”

“Is it like this all summer, or is it at its best now?”

“Reaching its peak about now or shortly.” Paul went back to gather a handful
of the tiny white stars which, returning, he strewed with thoughtful care along
Caroline’s arm from wrist to elbow. “When it does, we—” he corrected himself
—“they’ll be gathering every day as long as the crop lasts, from before dawn
until noon, which is the latest that the day’s ‘pick’ can leave for Grasse by every
lorry that can be mustered to take it.”

“Who gathers it?”

He shrugged. “Toute le monde. Everyone with two hands and a back that’ll
take bending double for seven hours or so at a stretch. Women and teenagers
mostly. Often the girls gather for hours before they go off to their ordinary jobs.
It’s a way of earning extra money for one’s dot, and it qualifies one for being
chosen as Jasmine Queen for the Fete.”
 “I’ve heard about that,” said Caroline. “It’s held in Grasse, isn’t it, after the
jasmine harvest is in?”

“Yes. By definition it’s a cross between a beauty parade, a battle of flowers, a

horkey and a harvest home. The town band out in full force; a procession
headed by the fire squad, since they’re the real Wielders of powers around these
parts; dancing in the evening on the Cours and usually one of the light operas
done in the open air. But you’ll see for yourself—”

“If Betsy and I are still here when it’s held.” Caroline forestalled the question
she saw he was about to ask by adding, “And when the crop has been gathered,
what happens then?”

“I’ve told you—it’s delivered to Grasse, and if you want a lecture on how it’s
dealt with there, you should apply to Berthin. Here the plants are covered with
as much soil and litter as they’ll take; really because they don’t stand cold well,
though by local legend because Mother Nature calls them back to the
underworld every year. They push through again in early spring; then they’re
pruned and manured and they’re away to another season. A fussy devil, though,
jasmine. Needs its sun and its water and its soil just right. Greedy too; it
exhausts its ground so thoroughly that it’s only possible to plant twice in the
same place in a generation. But bless its sweet heart, even roses have to give it
best as the aristocrat of the region. And when the backroom boys in Grasse
manage to concoct a synthetic to take its place, that’ll be the day—only it won’t
be yet, thanks be.”

Caroline thought, I know now what he meant when he said his approach to
flower farming was different from Berthin’s! For it seemed to her that where
Berthin saw their culture only in terms of yield, Paul saw flowers busy at their
growing to beauty and fragrance; even thought of them as capricious
personalities which had to be humored, and loved them for it. Berthin’s real
interest only began with their processing in the maw of the scent factories, by
which time Paul had done with them as, in the compelling cycle of nature, the
mother-plants had done with them too.

Knowing she liked Paul’s view best, she said, “I take back ‘out of character.’
It wasn’t—fair of me.”

He slanted a quizzical look at her profile. “I told you ‘out of character’ would
crop up again! But—backpedalling on it of your own accord? Why?”

“Because I’ve just realized you wouldn't have been as angry as you were
about the risk to the crops from Henri Mercier’s fireworks if you cared as little
about the estate as you’d have people believe.”

“My dear girl, what feminine reasoning! I need to live by the estate, don’t I?
Do I have to be sentimentally committed to it, just because I’d rather not see my
next year’s dividends go up in smoke at the hands of a tipsy lout like Merrier?”

Caroline shook her head. “You are committed to it. You do care about it. If
you didn’t, you couldn’t talk about the crops as lovingly as you did just now.
What’s more, the only other time I’ve ever seen you angry or even roused was
over the same subject—the estate.”

“So? And when was that?”

“The first morning I was at Berthin’s cottage. I was behind the cellar door
when you were quarrelling with him about the state of the mimosa plantation. I
overheard all you both said, and I may say that at the time my sympathies were
wholly with Berthin.”

“And you’re not alone in that—But if you’ve now seen Fragonard for
yourself, perhaps you’ll agree I had reason for blowing up about its condition?”

“Perhaps—but only, as Berthin pointed out, if you were prepared to do

something about it. After all, why should he get more kicks than ha’pence for
doing the very best he can by the estate and by you and your dividends?”

“He doesn’t do so badly in ha’pence. Anyway, he seems to have ranged you

well on his side, and if his courting is to match, I wonder when I must listen for
the merry tocsin that’ll put him into the real money and beyond the kicks for
good?”

“Berthin is not courting me!”

“No? My extra-sensory perception must be right off beam ... However, since I
seem to be on the mat for my sins of omission, perhaps you’d care to suggest
how I might reform?”

“I think you could ask yourself whether you’ve any right to criticize Berthin,
when you’ve contracted out of all responsibility for the estate. You could also
stop thinking and speaking about him as ‘the enemy’ when he is nothing of the
sort and is generous enough not to think of you that way.”

“So you have discussed my shortcomings with him?”

“Not only your shortcomings. He also told me the truth about your quarrel
with your father—over this very plantation, wasn’t it?”

“He did, did he? Berthin heaping coals of fire—! And I suppose in the course
of this forum au sujet de moi, you also touched on the question which always
crops up when my affairs are discussed—he canvassed your opinion and you
canvassed his as to why I haven’t clinched matters in my favor by beating him
to the altar before now?”

“We did nothing of the sort.”

“I’d like to believe you—Equally,” as Paul spoke he was intent on flicking a

lingering floret or two from Caroline’s arm, “I’d rather like, for some odd quirk
which I may later regret, to tell you why, if you’d care to know?”

“If you think you’re likely to regret it, I shouldn’t.”

“And if you had half the intuition your sex is credited with, you wouldn’t
need telling! Because, ask yourself—what girl, knowing the set-up for what it
is, isn’t going to look for the nigger in the woodpile of a proposal of marriage
from me?”

“You mean she might suspect she was being used as a lever to regain you the
control of Pascal? But why should she? You wouldn’t presumably be proposing
just to ‘a girl,’ any girl, out of the blue without—well, without having made
love to her first, found out whether she seemed to love you?”

“Well, naturally I shouldn’t have picked her name out of a hat. But having
marked one down as the object of my honorable passion and aimed my best
love-arrows at her, how could I be sure she was convinced that my motives in
asking her to marry me weren’t really tied up with Pascal?”

“Surely that’s up to you? You shouldn’t need advice from me on—technique.

But if you want a blueprint on how, on your side, you might convince this—this
hypothetical girl that you were sincere, I could suggest one, though you may
not like it.”

“I’ll buy it. Go ahead.”

“Well, I think you could prove almost anything in the way of sincerity
towards her if, when you asked her to marry you, you weren’t still acting the
playboy while Berthin struggled alone with all the problems that have been
wished on him; that is, if you were showing much more active goodwill
towards him and the estate than you have done up till now.”

“Goodwill? In other words, ‘Handsome is as handsome does’?”

Caroline nodded. “Roughly.”

“I see.” A small silence. Then, “Pity, isn’t it, that no woman born can ever
keep an argument off a personal level?” Paul mused aloud.

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that that was no ‘hypothetical girl’ talking. It was you.”

 “It was not!”

“It was you,” he insisted. “It was you crusading for Berthin, and all the rest
was you because, on your own showing, that’s the kind of rugged worth you’re
going to demand of the man you marry—remember? But how much do you
suppose this rather dreary goodwill you’re advocating would count with the
honey-chile who’d like to get married but would naturally prefer to believe she
was being courted for love? Take an example. Take, say, Betsy—”

“Don’t take Betsy! That is—” she said to his glance of surprise at her
vehemence—“If you’re not serious about her—and even she admits you aren’t
—you haven’t any right to ‘take’ her in this connection.”

“Why not? She’s a poppet. Attractive. Biddable. She likes me. Why shouldn’t
I short-list her with a view to proposing marriage?”

“You wouldn’t dare! Not without loving her, and you don’t, do you?”

“Not, in current American, ‘as of now,’ I admit. But how did you guess?”

“At heart, she knows it herself. But she still can’t resist you. Which makes
what you did tonight utterly unfair to her and rather—horrible.”

She had to wait for his reply to that. Then he stated rather than asked, “So it
was you with Ariane on the terrace.”

“You saw us?”

“By the same chance searchlight which, I imagine, showed Betsy getting
herself kissed in the garden-room. All right. I plead guilty to doing it as if I
meant it. No defence, except that she is eminently kissable and wanted me to.
Which you consider pretty flimsy, I daresay?”

“Seeing how vulnerable she is where you’re concerned, yes.”

 “But if you were a man,” he countered, “you’d know there are just three ways
of dealing with a girl who wants to set the pace, as Betsy would like to. You can
feel flattered and go all the way she asks—and afterwards curse yourself for a
fool for getting involved. Or you can take the line, ‘My good infant, I’m no
cradle-snatcher!’ which is guaranteed to make her your enemy for life. Or you
can recognize her crush on you for what it is—as a kind of measles she will get
over in time—and play along with it just short of hurting her pride, which is the
ploy I’ve used with Betsy. And never, if it does anything for your peace of
mind, with any vestige of intention of proposing to her without the proper
emotions on my side.”

Caroline said, “I’m glad to hear it, I couldn’t believe you could be quite so
callous, and until tonight I’d given you credit for handling her admirably. But—
kissing her like that! If that’s your idea of ‘playing along’ as you call it, and her
idea as well as yours of playing fair by her fiancé, then the sooner the better you
stop being as kind as all that to her—measles!”

At that his head jerked round in sharp disbelief. “What’s this about a fiancé?”
he asked. “D’you mean Betsy—?”

“—is already engaged. Or as near as makes no matter. But you must have
known that?”

“No, I swear not. What do you take me for? Though what, come to that, is the
man thinking of, letting her run loose about the Riviera without him?”

“He can’t help himself.” Caroline outlined Edward Brant’s commitments with
beef cattle in the Argentine. “They would have been officially engaged already
if he hadn’t been sent out there, and I never dreamed Betsy hadn’t told you
about him,” she added.

Paul said, “Not a hint. She deserves to be roundly spanked—But don’t worry.
Since she meant that I should kiss her some time, tonight’s clinch was
inevitable. But I’m pretty sure she knew it for what it was—a kiss at a party
which implied neither my pent-up passion for her nor the wilful seduction
which your concern for her seems to have judged it. I suppose Ariane was in on
the spectacle too?” he finished casually.

“Yes—unfortunately.”

“Why unfortunately?”

If he didn’t know why, Caroline had no intention of spelling it out for him.
Skirting the truth of Ariane’s reaction, she said, “Because only a few minutes
earlier she had told me she was worried for Betsy too, and as I had said I
thought you were to be trusted not to encourage Betsy, it didn’t help my
argument to come upon you apparently making love to her like crazy.”

Paul’s laugh rang out. “Merely art for art’s sake! Or ‘Whatsoever you set your
hand to, do it with all your might.’ In other words, why kiss a girl at all, if you
aren’t going to bring some enthusiasm to it?”

“Why indeed? As long as she doesn’t read the enthusiasm for what it isn’t,”
Caroline commented dryly.

“Ah, but didn’t you say I shouldn’t need advice on technique? You keep the
thing gay, but play it lightly enough, and she’ll be in no more danger from it
than, for instance, you would be if I kissed you now.”

Despising the nervous prickle which ran along her spine, Caroline said, “If
that’s true, it seems a fair enough comparison and quite—perceptive of you, if I
may say so.”

He laughed again, though more shortly. “Easy! And all on your own evidence
that you’re ironclad and bullet-proof against philandering irresponsibles like
me!” He paused. Then,

“Or I wonder—are you ma mie?” he said, as he drew her roughly to him and
kissed her hard and long upon her unresponsive mouth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WHEN he released her Caroline moved off the footbridge and for the whole of
the return walk kept the half-pace ahead of him which the narrowness of the
path alongside the jasmine demanded.

“I hope that answered your question to your satisfaction?” she said over her
shoulder, as soon as she had control of her voice.

“As to whether your sangfroid is in any danger from me? Well, suppose we
say that if it is, you concealed the fact pretty well? For I don’t remember kissing
anyone quite so unrewardingly since I nerved myself to my first, and contacted
the bridge of the lady’s nose instead. And she wasn’t, if I recall, any more
ecstatic over the encounter than you were.”

“Then kissing me will have been an experience to add to that one, won’t it?
And what right have you to expect a rapturous reception every time, when you
go about kissing people on a kind of conveyor-belt system? Betsy... Me ... How
many more are you going to kiss before the night’s out, for goodness’ sake?”

Before the tart leading question was half put she was regretting the cheapness
of it, and when he replied, knew she had asked for it and deserved what she got.

He said, “At a guess, at least one. Though if the number is more and you’ll
indent tomorrow for the full list, I daresay I shall be willing to supply it. And
can you blame me? Having extended myself to kiss Betsy for her pleasure, and
having kissed you on an impulse which patently afforded no pleasure to either
of us, don’t I rate some enjoyment of my own? Whose party is it, anyway?”

At the unruffled tone of that, at the hint of laughter behind it which, as had
happened before, made nonsense of her own dudgeon, Caroline was sorely
tempted to turn about—the movement would bring them face to face and very
close—and to lift up her lips willingly to his and show him, show him just how
passionately she could answer him, kiss for kiss, if she dared. But she listened to
the voice inside her which said headily, “Why don’t you?” for no more than a
moment. Then her pride took over, refusing to stand in line for his favors
between Betsy and Ariane and only just in front of such other possibles as might
take his casual fancy before the evening was over. And as there seemed no
adequate reply with which to counter his last challenge, she made none and
continued to keep her distance ahead of him in silence.

In the house again Paul stopped to speak to a couple she did not know and she
slipped away from him into the salon where the floor-show had already begun.

It was colorful, adroit, risqué and, after the fashion of French cabarets, went
on too long. By the time it was over, by common consent the party was too, and
even Betsy was ready to leave when Caroline was. Back at the villa neither
wanted the snacks or the carafe of wine which Marie had left ready on a tray;
they talked “party” over cigarettes instead, while Caroline braced herself to the
thing she had resolved must be said, pierce Betsy’s bubble of elation as it might.

At last, quietly and into a small silence, she dropped it. “Bet, let’s go home,”
she said.

Betsy stared at her, as if in distrust of her own hearing. “Go home? Back to
England? Now? What an utterly mad thing to suggest!” she exploded.

“It isn’t. Look, I know you can’t get back into the flat until Uncle Ralph and
Aunt Clio come home. But you could come and stay with me, or if that sounds
too dreary to you, couldn’t you still join the Drages in Italy? Or we could both
stop off in Paris for a while ... anywhere, wherever you like, as long as it’s away
from here,” urged Caroline, guilty in the knowledge that, equally with her own
concern for Betsy, her suggestion had stemmed from her own fight for survival
from Pascal’s deadly charm.

But Betsy was adamant, blind to a wisdom which she saw only as a craven
surrender. “Not on your life,” she said: “I’m not stirring until I have to. Not
now.” Pausing and making a small importance of stubbing out her cigarette, she
did not look at Caroline as she added, “I hadn’t told you; I sort of wanted to hug
it to myself for a bit. But tonight things changed ... between Paul and me. You
know I said I’d bet he would spend the whole evening with Ariane? Well, he
didn’t. He was with me quite a lot of the time, and when we had danced once, he
took me to the garden-room and he kissed me. And not just mistletoe either. Or
shotgun on my side. He made love to me ... really. You know—”

Caroline said, “I can guess. But don’t you see what danger and misery for
yourself you may be courting if he didn’t mean anything by it? And ask yourself
—how could he, sincerely? You’ve seen him with Ariane; you’ve heard the talk
about them; you know as well as I do the amount of time he spends with her
and, not least, you’ve heard how she speaks of him—as if she’d taken out
squatter’s rights in him already. Oh, Bet dear, do run before it’s too late, and if
you won’t run for your own sake, you might do it for Edward’s!”

“Edward’s?” Betsy spoke his name as if he were a stranger to her. “But you
don’t imagine, do you, that I can feel the same about him now? Paul has never
been as sweet with me as he was tonight, and why should you think you’ve a
right to judge how little or how much he meant by it when he kissed me?”

“Perhaps I haven’t, except that I think he must have been in rather a thorough-
going amorous mood, that’s all.”

“Must have been? What do you mean?”

“Just this.” Caroline’s decision to say it had been swift and possibly rash. “He
had said earlier that he wanted me to see the jasmine in full bloom and scent, so
before the floor show came on he suggested we should walk down there, and he
chose to try to kiss me on the way back.”

“To—? Just before the cabaret? But that—that couldn’t have been long after
he had been with me in the garden room!”

“No, I imagine not.”

“But—I don’t understand! You—and Paul? Why, he’s never—I mean, neither
of you has ever looked at the other, so why should he suddenly make love to
you?”

“He didn’t. Don’t think it. I’ve only told you about it in order to point the
moral. Because when I’d been kissed just about as pointlessly as ever in my
experience and told him so, that piqued him into admitting it wasn’t likely to be
his last effort of the evening and possibly not the last of several.” Pitying the
crumpled perplexity on Betsy’s face, Caroline added gently, “I’m sorry, Bet, but
do you see now why I thought it best to tell you?”

“I suppose so. The moral being that I may not have been the—first, or more
important to him than you or any of the others? But so what, if I’m not—yet?
While there’s anything like a remote chance for me against Ariane, I’m not
leaving the field to her by running away to England or to Italy or wherever.
Besides,” Betsy appealed, “don’t you know anything about loving, Caro? For
instance, that when it’s the real thing, you’d rather have nothing than settle for
second best in its place, and that until a man abandons you flat or lets you know
for certain that someone else has beaten you to it, you don’t give it best or give
up hope that it isn’t true?”

Caroline said dryly, “Believe it or not, I do know.”

Betsy was instantly contrite. “That was mean of me. You do, don’t you? Roy
—”

“It’s all right. I’ve got over Roy. I only meant I can remember what it was like
—hoping. And I suppose I should have known that when you think you’re in
love, all the cautionary warnings in the world couldn’t make you want to save
yourself from the consequences, could they?”

Betsy shook her head. “It’s even simpler than that. You don’t foresee any
consequences except the ones you want. But does that mean you won’t go on
nagging me to run away from Paul, and that you’ll stay too?”

“I don’t promise not to tell you again that you’d be wise to cut your losses.
But I’ll stay as long as you think you must,” said Caroline. And she knew as she
spoke that until she used a ruthless will against it, love had left her no more
choice than Betsy had.

The next morning, on the pretext of thanking Paul for the party, Betsy
telephoned him, only to be met by Simone’s stonewall of “Monsieur is out”
which Caroline agreed was difficult to believe so early after a “night before”
like the previous one.

“I bet she’s lying, and I hope he gives her a rocket when he hears that I rang. I
left a message for him to ring me back. But I don’t know—do you think it might
be a good idea if, just for once, I paid him in Simone’s coin and wasn’t here
when he does?” Betsy appealed.

“Always supposing he does, and he may not,” Caroline warned.

Betsy bit her lip. “I’ll face that when he hasn’t. I’ve got to hope he’s going to,
don’t you see? But as it’s likely to drive me crackers to stay within reach of that
telephone without using it, let’s go out for the whole day, shall we, so that Marie
can tell him—truthfully—that I’m out when he does ring?”

As Betsy’s first show of independence, Caroline welcomed the idea.

Accordingly they drove over to Nice and spent the whole day there, window-
shopping in the morning and taking a trip by motor-launch out to the lovely
Lerins Isles in the afternoon. On their return they treated themselves to an a la
carte dinner on the Promenade des Anglais and drove back at dusk to hear from
Marie that there had been no telephone calls at all.

Betsy’s dismay at the news was pitiful to see. “He can’t mean to leave ... last
night just hanging in the air!” she said, seeking a reassurance which Caroline
longed to give her and could not. However, though it was difficult, she managed
to persuade Betsy to the dignity of waiting for Paul to make the first move—
which he had not done by noon of the next day, when Caroline was due to lunch
with Ursule and Berthin at their cottage.

“Come with me?” she urged Betsy. “Ursule loves having people to meals, and
afterwards Berthin is going to take me to Grasse to see over some of the
perfumeries.”

But Betsy chose to see disloyalty to Paul in accepting hospitality from Ursule.
“I’ll go down to Cannes and have a swim and probably get my hair done—or
something,” she said listlessly, leaving Caroline in little doubt that she would
have tried again to get in touch with Paul before the day was over.

At the cottage, Ursule, free now of the plaster cast on her ankle, was ready
with her usual welcome to Caroline. They had an aperitif before Berthin came
in, and over a meal—clear soup, a vol-au-vent of prawns and a fluffy cold
soufflé—which a cordon bleu chef could not have faulted—Paul’s name was not
mentioned between the three of them. But soon after Caroline and Berthin were
on their way to Grasse, Berthin said,

“I’ve something rather odd and unexpected to tell you. The day before
yesterday Paul—of all people!—came down to the estate office and without the
flicker of an eyelid at the effrontery of it, wanted to know if it wasn’t high time I
gave him a responsible job! Or perhaps I rated him as incapable of holding one
down—was that it? he demanded!”

'Caroline caught her breath. “The day before yesterday? That was the morning
right after the party!”

Berthin turned to grin at her. “Exactly—which added to the oddity! What’s

more, I was a bit late myself; he was already there waiting for me, and I got the
impression he was prepared to take me to task for not being at my desk on the
stroke of nine!” Berthin paused and chuckled. “You know, Caroline,
exasperating as the fellow can be, one can’t help liking him for his sheer
audacity, can one?”

“No—but what did you say to him?”

“First, I swallowed hard on at least six trenchant things I could have said.
Then I threw the ball back to him by asking him what particular responsible job
he had in mind.”
 “And—?”

“Well, after a while we agreed he should take over the recruitment of enough
labor to clear Fragonard of the worst of its debris and organize at least a
skeleton patrol for it. And when I told him his guess was as good as mine as to
how many hands we were likely to get for the jasmine picking, he took that on
too. Since when,” Berthin added on another chuckle, “I can only conclude he
has been out and about on both projects, for I haven’t set eyes on him or heard
from him.”

“But didn’t he explain his change of front or say why he had suddenly decided
to co-operate with you?” puzzled Caroline.

“Ah, I knew better than to ask him. But as we shook hands on the deal he
looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Aren’t you afraid this is the thin end of
the wedge, because you ought to be?’ To which, as he intended I should, I said,
‘The thin end of what wedge, my friend?’ and he laughed. ‘Of the probability, if
you don’t make better speed with your courting, of finding yourself out of a job
—what else? he said, and was out of the room before I could come back at him
that he needn’t be so cryptic, since it wasn’t hard to guess what he meant.”

Caroline moistened her lips. “You think he meant he would be marrying and
so claiming the estate back before long?”

“Well, don’t you? Though why he should imagine his timing has ever been in
danger from my courting anyone, I can’t think,” said Berthin, and Caroline
refrained from telling him why.

In a town the size of Grasse seventeen factories had sounded a formidable

number. But Caroline, was to find that for the most part they were small,
pleasant buildings run as family concerns, many of them surrounded by their
own subtropical gardens and all of them bathed in the inescapable sweet aroma
which pervaded the whole town.

It was impossible to visit them all, so Berthin chose two of the larger to show
her, from their cool grille-shaded courtyards where the flower-tumbrils
unloaded, to distilling floors, volatile extraction rooms, experiment laboratories,
packing departments and sales salons. In one perfumery she was shown
Lalique-designed perfume flagons worth a modest ransom; in an inner sanctum
of the other she was privileged to meet its Monsieur le Nez—one of the
acknowledged uncrowned kings of the industry at the dictates of whose skilled,
inspired noses the haunting bouquet of every glamorous man-made scent in the
world must be conceived and born.

Afterwards Berthin had business at a third factory, and when they had
arranged a later rendezvous at its, entrance, Caroline went off for a tour of the
town.

The Fragonard Museum was closed for the day, but she visited the cathedral
and watched myriads of swifts wheeling and swooping about its towers before
going to sit in the shade of the plane-trees on the Cours while she drank iced
coffee and enjoyed the view across the valley towards the sea.

She was early at her meeting-place with Berthin and he was not yet there. But
the station wagon was, and she had just got into it when someone she had no
wish to see came out of the courtyard behind the gates. But Henri Mercier had
seen her too and sauntering over to speak to her with no noticeable
embarrassment at the memory of their last encounter.

He asked her what she was doing in Grasse and she told him briefly; whom
she was with, the perfumeries she had seen and why she was waiting for Berthin
now. He confirmed that he worked in the laboratories of this one, but when she
asked if André Mayence did too, he scowled.

“That character? Oh, yes, he works here too, which makes me wish I didn’t,”
he said.

Caroline’s brows lifted. “I thought you were good friends?” she queried.

“Friends! With that one—after the way he sided against, me the other night?
After the way he crept to Paul Pascal as if there were something in it for him?
What do you think?” Henri retorted.
 Caroline drew breath and gathered herself to tell him. “If you must know,” she
said, “I think you came off a good deal better than you deserved at André’s
hands, as well as at Paul’s. You were drunk; you behaved not far short of
criminally with those fire-crackers, and you were pretty lucky to have someone
like André to drive you home, because if you hadn’t you might have done
something really criminal or suicidal on the way!”

Momentarily Henri seemed taken aback by her vehemence. Then he sneered,

“Well, well—how righteous can you get! So I’d had a few drinks, what of it?
And what are drinks for at a party, if they aren’t meant to be used?”

“In this case, I daresay Paul expected his guests were civilized enough not to
need throwing out in order to convince them they had had enough. And if you
want to accuse him of putting temptation in your way, I’d remind you that he
didn’t provide the fireworks—you brought them, and do you suppose he was
going to stand by while you played at near-arson with them? Because even I
know that in this drought and with the crops like tinder, it could well amount to
that.”

“Arson? There’s a nasty idea to put into a fellow’s head!” Henri laughed
unpleasantly. “But since you ask me—yes, I could suppose that Monsieur P.
mightn’t be all that worried if someone not so closely connected with him that
he could be implicated should happen to drop a handy match in one or two of
his precious plantations. After all, it’s common knowledge enough, isn’t it, that
he couldn’t care less about Pascal’s crops as crops; only what they mean in hard
cash? And couldn’t he hope to keep even his more expensive petites amies
happy on what he could get in the way of fire insurance if he handled the thing
intelligently?”

Words failing her, Caroline could only stare. Then she choked, “How dare
you? How dare you?” and once more found her anger at a loss. Later, she knew,
she would regret the moment’s missed chance to take a stand for Paul. But just
then she could only stutter and hate Henri’s foolish, evil leer. And before she
could collect herself sufficiently to put it out of countenance, Berthin was there
and with a jaunty “Au ’voir” which she ignored, Henri strolled away.
 Berthin looked after him and then at Caroline’s heightened color. As he drove
off, he asked, “Ought I know that young man? I hope I didn’t interrupt
anything?”

“No ... Yes. That is, I was thankful to see you. You may know him, I don’t
know. His name is Mercier; he works in the perfumery you’ve just been to. I’ve
met him several times in Cannes, and he was at Paul’s party the other night,”
said Caroline.

“And he was making himself a nuisance to you now?”

“Not in the way you mean, I think. But he was seeing fit to—to slander Paul.”

Berthin compressed his lips and nodded. “So? And when I arrived on the
scene, you were springing to Paul’s defence?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t. Now I can think of a dozen things I ought to have said,
but you know how it is when you’re taken aback by sheer brazen impudence?”

“Yes, indeed. But would you care to repeat what he said about Paul which
roused you so?”

“Well, it arose out of a nasty incident at the party—” At the end of her account
of the ugly scene on the terrace and Paul’s summary treatment of Henri,
Caroline added, “I believe he was expecting sympathy from me. But I told him I
thought he had asked for all he got.”

“I see. But you mentioned slander of Paul?”

“Yes. He had the nerve to suggest that even if the plantations near Maison
Pascal had been endangered by his idiocy, Paul wouldn’t really care, except
insofar as it touched his pocket.”

“Sale bête!” Berthin’s tone boded ill for Henri if he had been there to hear it.
Frowning, Berthin was silent for a moment. Then,
 “And it was this that you considered to be the rankest injustice to Paul?”

“Well, wasn’t it?”

“I hope so. I believe so. But I’ve an idea this Mercier fellow only voiced what
a lot of people have thought about Paul since I took over the control of Pascal.
And ask yourself—before this latest peace-move of his, would you have been so
ready to argue the odds in his favor?”

“Yes, I should.”

Berthin turned to smile at her. “I’m glad. That makes two of us. But why?”

“Because—Well, I suppose because he was so genuinely angry about the risk

of fire. If he hadn’t been, I think he would have been a lot more tolerant of
Henri’s being drunk, and a good deal less violent about throwing him out. It was
rather a blot on the evening, of course. But in a way it was—good to see, if you
know what I mean?” Caroline appealed.

Berthin nodded. “I know I should have been glad to see it,” he agreed,
unaware that she had stopped short of describing another scene she would
remember longer and valued more.

... Paul, proud of his heritage, wanting to show it to her in his own way ...
Paul, describing the year’s natural cycle of life lovingly, vividly, giving the lie to
his front of indifference to the affairs of the estate ... Paul, gathering an idle
handful of jasmine flowers and then giving consummate care to dropping them
one by one along her forearm; here, there, there—for all the world as if it
mattered where each fell and rested.

True, there was no reason against sharing this with Berthin too. But it was a
wholesome, gentle memory of Paul which, she hoped would outlive the distaste
of his kiss which had meant nothing to either of them, and she wanted to keep it
to herself, sharing it with no one.
 As she had forseen, Betsy had telephoned Paul from Cannes with the same
abortive result as before. So, short-sighted as it might be, it was good to console
her with the news of his call on Berthin and the preoccupations which had kept
him out and about the estate since.

“You say he actually went to Berthin and volunteered to start pulling his
weight?” Betsy puzzled.

“So Berthin told me.”

“But didn’t he think it pretty odd of Paul?”

“I gather he didn’t look that particular gift horse in the mouth. They agreed on
the work Paul should take over and it seems he has gone to it with a will. Even
Berthin hasn’t seen him since.”

“So he could really have been out whenever I’ve phoned? He hasn’t
deliberately avoided me?”

“I hope not.” said Caroline. But at that Betsy turned on her.

“Do you? I wonder! By the way you’re always warning me against him. I
should have thought you would be almost gratified if he were really dropping
me flat,” she accused.

Caroline said, “You know that’s not fair. But forget it. I meant I hoped that if
he isn’t serious about you, he would be kinder than that about letting you know
it. But even at the risk of ‘warning’ you yet again, I think you ought to know
what Berthin read into this move of his.”

Betsy nodded glumly. “You don’t have to tell me. I can guess. It’s his way of
taking back the control from Berthin, knowing it will legally be his again soon?
Yes, I thought as much—”

She paused. Then, contrite, added, “I’m sorry, Caro, about ‘gratified.’ I do
realize that you don’t want me to get hurt by banking on hopes I haven’t got if
everyone is right and Paul is going to marry Ariane quite soon. But you see, I
don’t mean to stay in doubt much longer. I promise you I won’t run after Paul.
But the next time I see him I shall bring the talk round to Ariane and ask him
straight out.”

“And risk being roundly snubbed for your pains? I shouldn’t if I were you,”
advised Caroline.

Betsy’s chin went up. “Why not? After ... the other night, he couldn’t possibly
slap me in the face by telling me to mind my own business; how could he?” she
claimed.

But she spoke without conviction, and Caroline guessed that if Paul were even
only normally friendly and forthcoming with her, she would not risk putting the
question which might resolve her doubts—the wrong way. Betsy would cling as
long as she could to ignorance which she found comparative bliss; a smile, a
gesture, a casual endearment, and she would again be head-in-sand blind to the
little Paul meant by them. No, Betsy did not really want to know the truth of his
relations with Ariane, and she was not alone in that. Deliberately ostrich-blind
and deaf herself, Caroline did not want to know it either. Not until time and
distance had dulled the memory of a scented night, dark, magical, and so still
that a drift of jasmine-stars had lain where Paul’s hand had strewn them until he
had brushed them away...

In the next morning’s post there was a card for Caroline to say that a book she
had ordered through Villon’s small bookshop was now to hand. It was the
French translation of Edward Lear’s classic, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat; before
leaving England she had seen it on display there and had since thought of it as a
nice present for Simone Latour.

She walked down into Villon to collect it, but had just paid for it and was
waiting for it to be wrapped when she heard Simone herself asking for cooking-
foil at a nearby stationery counter.

Caroline took back the book from the assistant. “Don’t trouble. It is for
Madame here,” she said, and took it over to Simone, who was loud with
greetings and only momentarily dumbfounded with surprise at the gift.

“For me? Le Hibou et La Pousiquette,” she read from its jacket. “But owls and
cats do not—! Ah, I see it is a fairy story, and in les contes féeriques anything
can happen—no? And you are giving it to me, Mademoiselle, because you
know that I shall enjoy it with my dear Clementine in mind?”

Caroline said, “Yes. It’s a humorous poem that most English children know
and grown-ups enjoy too, and when I remembered it had been put into French I
thought you would like to have a copy.”

“You are too kind, Mademoiselle. I shall keep it always. I haven’t many books
—Tch! A great old brown owl courting a pussy-cat—now there’s a droll thing!”
chuckled Simone, stowing the slim volume into her shopping bag before
completing her own purchases.

They went out of the shop together. But under its sunblind Simone paused.

“You did not look in at Clementine and her family on the night of Monsieur’s
party?” she said, making a faint accusation of it.

“No. You were very busy and I didn’t think I ought to ask you to show them to
me,” said Caroline. “How are they getting on?”

“Fast. Fast. Even Clementine, good mother that she is, is tiring of them a little,
and that is a sign they must soon look about them for homes of their own. But
you could see them for yourself, Mademoiselle, if you have nothing better to do
than walk back with me to the house now?”

Caroline hesitated. “Well—”

“Monsieur Paul is out on business, but he will understand that I want you to
see Clementine and her kittens again before we part from some of them. So will
you come?” Simone urged.
 “All right, I’d like to.”

Owing to the heat they took their leisurely time for the mile-long walk up
through the plantations, talking cats and kittens most of the way. At the house
they found Clementine was out about her own affairs. But the kittens, long since
free of the confines of the music cupboard, were in clamorous evidence
—tumbling each other until the lesser man screamed and decamped; flirting
briefly with their toys, then abandoning them; washing spasmodically while
planning fresh mischief and then, as suddenly as if they had been pole-axed,
falling fast asleep, tiny terra-cotta noses buried in pepper-and-salt paws.

Caroline was nursing one of these inert bundles when Simone returned from
the kitchen, bringing iced citronade for her and saucers of bread and milk for
any kittens who might be interested.

Hands on ample knees, she stooped to peer at Caroline’s charge.

“Ah, you have our little Benjamin there, Monsieur Paul’s favorite whom he
insists we must keep when, the others go. For my part, I should have chosen that
bold, bad Tarquin there. But this is how it is with Monsieur Paul—his charity
always for the ill-starred, the luckless one. It was the same when he was a little
boy. Send him out with a pocketful of sous for his own spending and you could
be very sure he would give most of them to some other gosselin who could pull
the mouth that he had none!”

Caroline stroked Benjamin’s tiny cranium with a single fingertip. “Then you
knew Monsieur Pascal when he was a boy?” she asked.

“I? But of course. I was scullerymaid in these kitchens before he was born.
And that is the way it has been since the Pascals first came to the region
—always at least one Latour, and often more, in their service. Not, you
understand, Mademoiselle, that we Latours are the only ones with such a record.
There are other families hereabouts who can boast as much. For example, the
Malines, the Severins, even the Raguses until—” But there, at Caroline’s
involuntary start, Simone broke off in confusion.
 “I am sorry, Mademoiselle! You know this name?”

“Not looking up, Caroline said, “Yes.”

“And you do not think it right to gossip of Monsieur Paul’s affairs with me?
Bien entendu! One understands this, and I should not have let my tongue run
away with me so. But indeed, indeed, Mademoiselle, if you are a friend of
Monsieur’s, you should know that none of the Fanchon Raguse affair was what
you think, nor as the world judged it at the time. Fanchon was a good girl—on
that I would stake my life! And Monsieur Paul told them so at the inquiry, over
and over again. But would they believe him? No! He had kept their rendezvous
at his villa, hadn’t he? He had given her money, and who would say from all this
but that she was cut from the same , shoddy cloth as her sister? Except Monsieur
Paul, of course, and they would not listen to him.”

Caroline said, “But if you are right and she wasn’t to blame, was there no one
to speak for her except Monsieur Pascal? Hadn’t she parents or any relatives?”

“No mother. A father, a ne’er-do-well who had been dismissed from the Pascal
stables some months earlier; this sister Aricie, who had not shown her face in
the region since she ran away with a married man three years before. Nobody
else. No one at all. Raguse pere had already slunk out of Villon before the
inquest and wasn’t to be found after it. But I—I, Simone Latour, know there was
nothing wrong between Fanchon and Monsieur Paul, and I could not say more if
she were my own daughter, could I?”

“I don’t think you could,” Caroline assured her.

“Yes, well—” Simone began to busy herself collecting used saucers and
ragged newspaper balls from the floor—“naturally Monsieur has never spoken
of this to me and I know my place better than to bring it up with him. So
perhaps, Mademoiselle, you won’t think it necessary to tell him I drew you into
gossip about it?”

“Of course I shan’t.”

 “Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

As Caroline rose, putting the sleeping, still furled kitten into the chair she had
vacated, Simone straightened and faced her.

“It is simply, you see, that there are too many people ready to judge Monsieur
Paul. And if he is too proud or too loyal to the dead to speak for himself,
someone must do it for him, even if it is left to an old woman who knows him
for the family man he really is—the best, the most generous and lovable in the
world,” she declared, stating a faith in Paul which Caroline’s heart echoed in
defiance of her head’s bleak reasoning against it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WALKING down to the villa, Caroline had almost reached it when she met
Paul’s car coming up. The last time she had seen him had been at the end of his
party when she and Betsy had called their good nights and thanks from the
fringe of a crowd about him and Ariane, and with the memory of their previous
tart exchange still rankling, she would have liked more warning before meeting
him now.

At sight of her he braked and opened the car door in invitation. But she shook
her head, closed it and stood against it as she said, “I’m only on my way home,”
and told him what her errand had been.

He nodded. “Sorry that, like Clementine, I wasn’t in,” he said. “I’ve been over
in Grasse, press-ganging an almost non-existent float of labor into the job of
cleaning up Fragonard. Yesterday I combed the region from end to end for
jasmine pickers whom everyone else wants at the same time. The day before
that—But I daresay you’ve heard from Berthin about the prodigal’s return,
haven’t you?”

Caroline looked him straight in the eye. “Yes, Berthin told me when he took
me over to Grasse yesterday.”

“And you said, ‘Well, there now! Who’d have thought he would be quite so
quick on the draw?’ Because of course you realize it was all your doing?”

“My doing? You didn’t mention me to Berthin! You told him—That is, he
thought—” She broke off, her color flaring.

Paul grinned. “Cousin B. shouldn’t overwork his intuition. Of course it was

the doing of your pep talk on the cultivation of goodwill—what else?”
 Caroline said, “If I remember rightly, you didn’t seem to think much of the
suggestion at the time. ‘Dreary’ was the description you used.”

“Well, you can’t deny it was a bit off-beat in a romantic setting I’d gone to
some trouble to create? Warm velvet darkness, perfume-drenched, and all that.
‘The time, the place and the—’ But no, we shouldn’t agree that that applies.
However, on the principle of ‘You never know’ and feeling I had nothing to lose
by a deathbed repentance, I decided to have a stab at an honest day’s toil. Hence
my call on Berthin more or less at first light the next morning, and now I can
only hope my zeal will be appreciated in the right quarter—How’s Betsy?”

Caroline was glad to accept the abrupt change of subject.

“She was worried when she couldn’t get you by phone, but she has been
happier since she has known you really weren’t there when she rang,” she told
him.

“But that doesn’t let me out, does it? I could have rung her back.” Crooking an
arm across the steering-wheel, he turned in his seat to face Caroline fully. “I
haven’t been so very clever about young Betsy, have I? I hadn’t realized she
didn’t know all the rules. So where do I go from here, Betsy-wise? I’m asking
your advice, Caro. I really want it.”

It was the first time he had used Betsy’s pet name for her, and she warmed to it
and to the rare gravity of his tone.

She said slowly, “It’s difficult to know how you’re to backpedal on making
love to her as you did. You mustn’t drop her flat, because that—hurts too much,
and yet I’m afraid she may read more than you mean into even ordinary
friendliness. Perhaps the kindest way would be for you to hint that you know
now she’s as good as engaged to Edward Brant, and blame yourself for rushing
her.”

He agreed, “Yes, that’s it. Though I daresay you would rather she didn’t hear
that it was you who had told on her?”
 Caroline nodded. “Please not.”

“She shan’t,” he promised. “The way I’ll work it, she will tell me. And from
there on I’ll play to a cue of apology, of renunciation, of suggesting I hope she’ll
let me be a brother to her—hm?”

“I suppose so. But, Paul, don’t guy it!” Caroline begged. “She’s so deadly in
earnest about you, and it’s so cruelly easy to—”

He cut her short with a hand laid over hers where it rested on the edge of the
door; briefly the eyes which looked into hers were as serious as she could have
asked.

“Don’t worry, Caro. I’ll be kind,” he said.

That evening he telephoned, asking for Betsy. She was a long time talking to
him, laughing a good deal, and when she rang off she told Caroline,

“It’s all right. He was as sweet as ever. It was simply that he’s been tied up
with this latest caper of his, as you said. I asked him what the idea was and he
said he was keeping his hand in, just in case. But when I said, ‘In case of what?’
he said, ‘Fishing—huh?’, which could have meant anything, so when he
changed the subject, I let him. He wanted to know if we’d care to go jasmine
gathering, just for the fun of it; I said yes for you as well. Was that all right?”

'Caroline said, “Yes, of course. I haven’t a clue as to how to go about it, but I’d
like to try. When do we start?”

“Tomorrow morning at the most ghastly hour. Five o’clock, no less! I said to
Paul, ‘Have a heart!’ But apparently it’s dawn or nothing with jasmine, and
when he said he would act as knocker-up and transport as well if we liked, I said
O.K. Besides, there’s one thing I’d go to town on—know what? That dear
Ariane won’t show up at five o’clock in the morning on a jasmine plantation,
which suits me just fine,” Betsy concluded with satisfaction.
 They set the alarm of her travelling clock for four-thirty and were both waiting
for Paul when he came to call for them. On the way down to a plantation off the
Villon road he told them they would be paid the rate for the job according to the
weight of flowers they picked.

“How many ought we to be able to pick in a morning?” they wanted to know.

“It depends on the yield, but you won’t do so badly if you manage something
over a kilogram apiece,” said Paul.

“Only a kilogram between now and noon? Are we stopping to string them into
daisy chains or something?” exclaimed Betsy.

He laughed. “My pet, a really skilled picker has her work cut out to pop four
kilograms in seven hours! Around eight thousand flowers go to the kilo, and
though that may mean nothing to you this side of your first trayful—believe me,
it will! So I’ll settle for about three kilos between you, and I shan’t cry shame if
you do a lot less.”

They began to gather by the half-light of the sun struggling for mastery of the
cold mist. But half an hour or so, and the sun had won; striking at first in long
bars from behind the mountain tops and then in a burst of radiance above them.

The pickers were spaced out, so many to a row, each of which appeared to
stretch to a horizon which might as well have been infinity. They gathered into
shallow baskets slung on their arms, at intervals emptying into the larger
panniers placed at strategic points. The work had to be done in the most tiring
position known to gardeners—at a half-stoop which set unaccustomed
backbones pleading for mercy.

In order that they could talk while they gathered, Caroline and Betsy elected to
work on adjacent rows. But in practice one or other pulled ahead and they lost
touch when they went to empty their baskets or when faster pickers caught up
with them, necessitating their beginning again elsewhere.

At one time Caroline was working alongside a crone with baked-apple cheeks
and gnarled hands which flashed and hovered among the blossoms with the
speed of hawkmoths. She hadn’t, she told Caroline, missed a jasmine harvest
since she was seven, and this morning she reckoned she had “had her kilo”
within the first hour.

From her Caroline gathered that one’s first kilogram of the day was a
milestone, a status symbol, and, still far short of her own, she was very touched
when the old lady plunged both hands into the fragrant depths of her basket and
unloaded four heaped fistfuls into her with a nod, a gappy smile and an “Allons!
Now you will soon have your kilo, Mademoiselle—no?” before she moved on
and out of range.

Another of Caroline’s fellow workers was a pretty teenager who was

concerned far less with kilograms than with the election of a Jasmine Queen for
the Fete. Taking it for granted that Caroline knew a certain Genevieve Bresson,
she canvassed her opinion anxiously.

Would Caroline say she had the better chance than ’Vieve, or not? Bien
entendu, ’Vieve, to some people’s way of thinking, had everything, but
everything! On the other hand she was old—twenty, no less. What was more,
she was already fiancée, which should be a disqualification in itself, didn’t
Caroline agree?

It was with “Vieve’s” rival for the jasmine crown that Caroline adjourned for
the equivalent of elevenses at about nine o’clock. The improvised canteen was a
truck loaded to its tailboards with bread, sausage, fruit and wine, provided free
by the estate to the pickers and dispensed by volunteers.

Among these was Ursule, lending a hand at Berthin’s request not Paul’s, she
was quick to assure Caroline, dismissing Paul’s new cooperation with a shrug
and a sour “Whatever is behind it, you may be sure it’s to his gain. And where,
for example, do you suppose he is now?”

Caroline didn’t know and said so.

“He has gone down to Cannes, if you please, to bring Madame Lescure up to
view the spectacle of the jasmine picking at its height! For my part, I shall have
gone home. I still have my morning’s work to do and Berthin’s luncheon to
prepare. And now, my dear, if you’d prefer not to form part of the peepshow,
should come with me. What do you say?”

But Caroline, fascinated by the task and eager to perfect her rhythm, in it,
elected to see the day’s picking out. She joined up with Betsy again, and for the
next hour they remained within shouting distance of each other.

It was Betsy who saw Paul and Ariane first. Stopping beside Caroline on her
way back from emptying her basket, she jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
“Look who’s slumming,” she invited. “Are we expected to pull our forelocks or
drop curtseys—which?”

Caroline straightened, rubbing her lumbar muscles with one hand and with the
other plucking her sweat-dampened shirt away from her shoulderblades. By
contrast with Ariane’s white fringed poncho and her nun-like wimple
surmounted by a classic straw boater, she felt and looked like a tramp, and so
did Betsy.

Paul was pointing and Ariane was using her cine-camera. Then they were
coming along the girls’ row and Ariane was begging them to pose for her.

Betsy said rudely, “It’s a free country. What’s to stop you turning your little
handle and taking what you please?” before picking up her basket and stalking
away to a new position.

Ariane shrugged. “Poor dear Betsy—so very transparent!” she murmured to no

one in particular. And then to Caroline, “You’ll let me take you, won’t you? Just
as you are—all gamine and careless and dressed for the part?”

“If you like.”

“Paul, too. Get into the picture!” Ariane’s proprietorial forefinger urged him
into the same focus as Caroline.
 As he obeyed, “What’s the caption to this one? ‘Brutal Overseer With Slave
Down On The Ole Cotton Lot?” he wanted to know.

“Of course not. If you pretend to be gathering too, I’ll take it ‘still’; we’ll call
it ‘Jasmine Morning’ and Caroline shall have a print to remind her of Pascal
after she has gone back to England—”

But before Ariane had adjusted her camera for the shot there was a sharp call
of “Caro!” and as Caroline turned she saw Betsy suddenly keel over as if in a
faint.

Caroline ran, thrusting through and over the knee-high bushes of the
intervening rows. But Paul’s longer stride took him ahead of her, and Betsy had
straightened and was leaning on him for support when Caroline came up.

“Betsy! What happened?”

“I—I don’t know.” Betsy cupped her face in her hands. “I—sort of passed out
for a moment. Everything went black. Probably the heat. It’s pretty savage, isn’t
it?”

Apparently the small crowd which had collected agreed with her. There were
sympathetic murmurs of “La pauvre petite! Elle s’evanouie! She faints from the
heat, and no wonder, for in England, they say, the sun has very little strength at
all!” Then Paul was saying gently, “You’d better call it a day, little one. I’ve got
the car handy and I’m going to take you home. Would you like Caroline to come
with you, or needn’t she?”

But as Betsy began, “She needn’t. I shall be quite all right with you—”
Caroline took the choice out of her hands.

“Of course I’m coming,” she said. “Marie asked for the day off in order to
gather too, remember, and you mustn’t be in the house alone, in case you feel
queer again.”
 As she spoke she thought Betsy looked none too pleased. But it was not until
she was lying down in the darkened salon of the villa and Paul had gone that she
said crossly, “I must say you could have let me get away with it, Caro! You
don’t really suppose, do you, that I’d forgotten Marie wouldn’t be here when
Paul brought me home?”

Caroline froze in the act of pouring the Vichy water which Paul had advised.
“Get away with it?” she echoed. “But, d’you mean you didn’t really feel awful?
You didn’t faint? You—staged the whole thing?”

At least Betsy had the grace to avoid her eyes. “Not altogether. I had begun to
feel I’d had about as much of all that stooping in the sun as I could take—”

“Then why on earth did you begin again after we had stopped for elevenses?”

“Oh, I thought I’d give it a bit longer. But when she showed up with Paul and I
went off on my own, it seemed a good idea to try it if it would work, and it
would have done if you’d had half the tact you were born with,” Betsy retorted
sourly.

“So it was an act! And the idea was—?”

“To get Paul to myself, of course. I calculated he’d have to suggest bringing
me home, and with Marie not here he would hardly leave me alone. And then of
course you had to spoil it all.”

“Well, what did you expect me to do? And as Paul believed you were really on
the sick list where would being alone with him have got you?”

“Well, at least it would have got him away from her for a bit, wouldn’t it?”
Betsy countered.

“As you say—Though if, in order to do that, you’ve got to resort to throwing
fake fits of the vapors, I should think it’s certainly high time you decided to give
Ariane best,” said Caroline, momentarily too impatient of Betsy’s tactics to feel
her usual sympathy for her.

Betsy sulked for the rest of the day, left the white lies to Caroline when Paul
telephoned to ask how she was and refused to go jasmine picking again the next
morning.

So Caroline went alone, and during the next few days saw the whole of the
Pascal harvest through as she moved with the pickers from one plantation to
another. Every noon she lined up to collect her pay as they did, for on the first
morning she had conceived a fancy to spend it on something of no particular
intrinsic value but so typically Provencal that she would re-live all this
summer’s bittersweet memories whenever she touched or looked at it.

Without knowing quite what she was looking for she scanned the shop
windows of Cannes in search of it, and on the morning of the Jasmine Fete to be
held in Grasse that evening, she was doing so on the Croisette when Witold
Czinner came along and spoke to her.

“You are indulging yourself in the feminine pastime of window shopping,

Mademoiselle?” he smiled.

“Well, not exactly.” Caroline described her errand, mentioning the sum she
wanted to spend.

He nodded thoughtfully. “One understands. You are looking for the souvenir
that isn’t labelled ‘A Present From the Côte d’Azur’ but will remind you of it all
the same? Well now, I wonder if you have considered some of the fine ceramics
they make in Vallauris? You have been to Vallauris, perhaps?”

Caroline hadn’t. But she knew of its fame for pottery and had been thinking
along those lines, she told him.

“Then would you care to see some of the pieces we have at Salon Ariane? A
minute, two perhaps, and we can be there, if you will come?”
 Caroline looked at her watch, and saw that it was noon. “But you must be on
your way to lunch,” she demurred.

His shrug made nothing of it. “There will be time enough for my dejeuner
when I have pleased you, if I can,” he said simply. “Besides, I am only too
happy to have met you, Mademoiselle. You were so kind at Maison Pascal the
other evening that I flatter myself you may be happy to hear that I am at last
going back to Warsaw!”

“You are? Oh, Monsieur Czinner, I’m so glad. When?” Caroline asked.

He beamed. “Very soon, I hope. It is before I thought possible and even now
before it is really prudent, since I am still short of the target of money I set
myself. But when I had news that my mother is ill I knew that if I waited I could
be too late. So I go now and must pray that it will all arrange itself in the end.”

“I do hope so, and I’m sure it will,” she assured him. “But what will the salon
and Madame Lescure do without you, Monsieur?”

“Ah, well—happily enough, that arranges itself too. I shall upset nothing by
going, for Madame is already planning to close the salon for her own personal
reasons. But this is her confidence to me. It is not generally known in Cannes.
So you will keep it to yourself, Mademoiselle, please?”

“Of course.” Standing behind him as he used his key on the door of the shop,
Caroline thought. That’s all it needed. If there’s been any doubt of Paul’s
intentions ... of Ariane’s, it’s finished now. Now it’s time for Betsy to go. For me
too. For me too!

From among the Vallauris ware which Witold showed her she chose an
unpainted jug of the loveliest proportions and two wall plates with Picasso-
inspired designs. Wishing also to give something to Ursule when she left, she
decided on a pair of old Fragonard prints. As, however, the latter had not yet
been priced, Witold suggested he should check with Ariane and send all her
purchases up to the villa together with the bill when he had done so.
 Caroline thanked him, wished him bon voyage if they should not meet again
before he left France, and parted from him at the bar where he was going for
lunch. But she did not catch the first available bus back to Villon. She sat in the
Croisette gardens for a long time, thinking. Then she counted the money in her
bag and with a sense of forcing Betsy to the brink of a Rubicon, went to the
nearest telephone and booked a person-to-person call to Chicago.

She did not get back to the villa until it was almost time to leave for Grasse
with Betsy if they were to secure good places from which to watch the
procession of silver band, parading firemen, decorated floats and the ceremony
of crowning the Jasmine Queen on the Cours before people had the choice of
dancing there themselves or of attending the open-air performance of
L’Arlesienne in the nearby public gardens.

Caroline already knew that her friend of her first morning’s jasmine picking
had been elected Queen by a narrow margin over the rivalry of “ ’Vieve.” But
’Vieve was there as chief Maid of Honor, and to judge by the smacking kiss the
girls exchanged at the crowning, no malice was being borne by either party.

Betsy wanted to dance, so until the band struck up she and Caroline toured the
booths around the Cours, buying balloons and paper streamers and replying in
kind whenever they were pelted with, flowers in the good-natured battles which
eddied back and forth around them. There was litter; there was dust; there was
stridency; wolf whistles; good-natured jostlings; handshakes; spurts of
quarrelling which petered out as swiftly as they flared. It was a community’s
age-old giving of thanks for the safe garnering of their harvest, and it was good
to be there and to join in.

As at Paul’s party, almost everyone the girls knew was there, with the
exception, to Caroline’s relief, of Henri Mercier. André Mayence, with whom
she danced several times, confirmed that since the affair of the fireworks he and
Henri had kept their distance from each other and said he didn’t know what
Henri did with his leisure time now. In any case, he himself was finishing his
laboratory course in a week or two, and after that they need never meet again.

It was while Caroline was dancing with him that she saw Paul; at first with
Ariane; then in a group of men; then dancing with Betsy. After that she lost
sight of both of them and was standing alone, looking out across the stone
balustrading of the Cours towards Cannes and the sea, when there was a touch
on her shoulder and Paul was there beside her.

“What are you doing, all on your lone? Where’s Betsy?” was his greeting.

“Betsy? The last time I saw her she was with you,” Caroline told him.

“That she ought first to be very sure she wan—have joined up with you again.
I’m afraid that when she parted from me, I wasn’t any more popular with her
than I frequently am with you.”

Caroline allowed the barbed comparison to pass. “You—not popular with

Betsy? That would be something new,” she said.

“No, seriously—You see, she forestalled the diplomacy you and I had planned
by volunteering that she was practically engaged to this Edward Brant and
asking my advice as to how she ought to break with him.”

“What did you say?”

“That she ought first to be very sure she wanted to break with him, and be
equally sure she was prepared to face the immediate future without him and
without the cosy feeling that being engaged must give any girl. To which she
replied that her feelings weren’t quite the point, were they? She would be
breaking her engagement because it wasn’t fair to go on with it when she had
fallen in love with someone else. And as long as she had done the right thing by
Edward, she supposed she would have to take her chance with the ‘someone
else’.”

Caroline sighed. “Oh, dear! And then—?”

Paul offered cigarettes, lighted hers, then his own. As he did so, “Well, rather
obviously I couldn’t take up that cue, could I?” he said.
 “I suppose not. So what did you say?”

“Ah, that’s where you’ll think I failed her, I’m afraid. I told her a shade too
vigorously that if she wanted the truth from me, she hadn’t the right to break
with Edward until she had seen him again, and my advice was to go back to
England and think it over very carefully before she did.”

“Which was, of course, the very last thing she wanted to hear from you, of all
people!”

“Poor babe, she scarcely waited to hear it. She muttered. ‘Oh, Paul, how can
you?’—reproach in every syllable, and dashed away.”

“Where from? Where were you?”

“In the Gardens. I didn’t follow her at once, and since I came back there was
no trace of either her or you until just now.”

“I’ve been in the Gardens too—with André Mayence,” said Caroline. Together
she and Paul scanned the dancers in search of Betsy until he said, “I suppose she
would hardly have left you flat and gone home alone?”

“I shouldn’t think so. But perhaps I’d better see if her car is still parked.”

“You won’t go alone. I’ll come with you.” As they pressed their way through
the crowds towards the car park he added, “I want to check on my own car, too.
On the way over, Ariane drove. She only looked in at the Fete before going to
dine with some friends on the Rue Carnot just below the Gardens. But if she
didn’t take the car’s ignition key with her by mistake, she must have left it in
position, for I find I haven’t got it.” Arrived at the car park they parted company.
It took Caroline only a minute or two to check that, though Betsy was nowhere
to be seen, the car was still where they had left it. But when she went to tell Paul
so, she found him in hot altercation with the attendant.

He turned to her briefly. “This doesn’t make sense! My car has gone, and this
fellow has just described Betsy to me—” He turned back to the man. “You say
Madame got into the driving seat and drove away as if she had a perfect right to
do so?” he asked.

“But yes, Monsieur! That is, she took the wheel and switched on the engine,
but she did not leave at once—”

Paul said to Caroline, “As you know, they didn’t issue any tickets, and they
asked that we shouldn’t lock the car, in case it had to be moved. As I thought,
Ariane had left the ignition key at the ready, and he says that as he recalled
‘Madame’ had driven in, he didn’t question her driving out again. But of course
he has only got the sex right—he mistook Betsy for Ariane.” To the man he
said, “Well, if Madame didn’t leave at once, what did she do?”

“She asked what was the worst, the most dangerous road out of the town, for
she wished to take it, wherever it led.”

At that Caroline plucked at Paul’s arm. “That can’t be true! Betsy hasn’t
enough French to be able to ask any such thing.”

He frowned. “No, she hasn’t, has she?” But when he put this to the attendant
the man agreed that Betsy had spoken in a mixture of English and halting
French which he did not understand.

"So I call my son Pierre who knows English, and he tells Madame what she
wants to know.”

“And this Pierre of yours—where is he?” demanded Paul.

“Hélas, he has gone to the dancing for a little minute. But he told me that this
was what Madame was asking, and that, though he doubted if he was right to
tell her, he directed her to take any road north out of the town and then to ask for
the one which runs up to the mimosa Plantage Fragonard and beyond, for if she
wanted hazards, that was the road for her. Whereupon Madame thanked him and
left.”
 “If she wanted hazards!” echoed Paul in a tone which boded ill for the absent
Pierre. Then he had another question for the man.

“How long since this happened?” he asked.

“Not long, Monsieur. Ten minutes, a quarter-hour perhaps.”

“But quite long enough for the young idiot to have broken her neck or
wrecked my car, or both!” As Paul put an urgent hand beneath Caroline’s elbow
and hustled her away he said over his shoulder, “All right, there’s no question of
the car’s being stolen—I know Madame,” and then to Caroline, “Look, we’ve
small chance of catching her in that bubble-gum of hers, but we’re going to try,
do you mind?”

Half running to keep pace with his stride, Caroline panted, “But how can you
start her car? She’ll have taken the ignition key with her. She always does.”

“No matter. There are ways of managing without.”

Evidently there were. For after some manipulations she did not understand the
small car’s engine sparked to life, and a few minutes later they were out of the
car park and speeding through the town.

“Can you imagine what took Betsy?” Caroline puzzled aloud. “She’s a good
driver and knows it. But I don’t think she’s ever handled a car of the power of
yours, and actually to ask for a dangerous road—I—”

Staring ahead into the blue dusk, Paul said, “Not so difficult to guess why she
did it. As I read it, she probably went to my car, meaning to sit in it to ensure
that she saw me again tonight. Then she found the ignition key handy and, being
as sore as she was with me, decided to pay me out by driving the car away. Do
you remember she once threatened to play hookey with it, and I left her under
no illusions as to how I should react if she did?”

“Yes. But you were both joking then. You—you don’t think,” Caroline
appealed on a long shuddering breath, “that it could be more than that? I mean,
that she wanted a dangerous road because she had got to the point of not caring
what happened either to her or to the car?”

“No, I don’t. Steady, Caro!” Paul’s hand went briefly over hers in reassurance.
“No, if I know Betsy, she’d wreak a petty vengeance, but she’s not suicidal. She
is too sure that life owes her something and that if she nags it enough, she’ll get
it. So you’ll find I’m right, I think—she’s going to be satisfied to have thrown
you into a flat spin of fear for her and me into the kind of mood I shall certainly
be in when we come up with her.”

“Don’t be too angry with her, Paul. I know you didn’t mean to hurt her, but she
must have found it pretty hard to take that you should tell her to go back to
England to Edward. She accepts it from me. She knows I think she ought to, and
in fact I took matters into my own hands this morning. I telephoned her mother
in Chicago and asked her if it were possible to pull any strings to get Edward
sent home pretty soon,” confessed Caroline,

“You did? With what result?”

“Well, Mrs. Lane couldn’t say. But she promised to let me know if it could be
arranged. And when she does, I hope Betsy can be persuaded that we must go
home too.”

“We? When Betsy goes, you’ll go as well?”

“Why, naturally. What did you expect?”

“Just that, I suppose, if Berthin really hasn’t made the grade with you.”

“I’ve told you before—there’s never been any question of—!”

“All right, all right, though you don’t mind my saying you must want them
superworthy, if Cousin B. couldn’t get on to your short list? And another thing
—I warn you I shall expect proper notice of your quitting the villa when you
go.”

“Then you must tell Betsy so. She’s your tenant,” said Caroline.

“I’m telling you, and you can pass it on. And if you do make a moonlight
flitting, I’ll have the law on you both, and how’s that going to look in the
‘Sidcup Echo’ and the ‘Belgravia Gazette,’ eh?”

How impossible it was to keep him at arm’s length for long! As Caroline
relaxed, sharing laughter with him, she recognized the familiar veering of her
responses to his raillery. Now she was hot in her own defence; now forgiving
him, letting him under her guard, her whole will against him disabled by her
love’s acceptance of him as he was—cut to a pattern which she had sworn she
would never choose again, yet which (and how he would enjoy the irony of it if
he knew!) she loved again in him and knew she always would.

He drove the little car faster than Betsy ever did. But with its greater power
and its head start on them, his own car had the advantage, and they agreed that if
Betsy could handle it at all and stayed on the road, they were not likely to
overtake her until she stopped.

“Never mind,” said Paul. “It’s going to do quite a lot for me to find her
stopped somewhere, with both, her and my car in one piece each. And once
she’s through Fragonard, I’m hoping that she’ll have had enough; that is, that
instead of going on up into the mountains, she will either come back on her
tracks or make it a round trip and go down by the comparatively easy road
behind the villa. You remember I met you and Berthin on it after he had taken
you up to Fragonard?”

Caroline nodded. “How can we know which way Betsy will have taken?”

“A good question, to which the answer is—we can’t, unless someone has
noticed the car, and the snag about that is that though I’ve just managed to lay
on a twenty-four hour patrol of Fragonard, I’ve had to give the men the night off
tonight, on account of the Fete. So there’ll be no one to ask. However, I shall
count on her doing the round trip and hope to be right.”
 “And if she does, do you suppose she’ll then drive all the way back to
Grasse?”

“I’d say it depends on how much rage she has worked out of her system. If by
the time she reaches the villa she has developed a conscience about taking my
car and leaving you flat, she’ll go back for you. If not, she may decide you can
get home as best you may and that the smart thing to do with the car will be to
park it in front of the villa and label it ‘Collect.’ In which case—!” But Paul left
the rest of his threat hanging in the air.

As they talked the car was climbing along roads which were narrow juttings
from the mountainsides; at their outer edges unguarded to drops of thousands of
metres; hazardous enough by day and death-traps to the unwary in the rapidly
falling night. Paul negotiated them with the skill born of long familiarity, taking
their straights at speed and awake to every possible danger offered by their blind
corners. Frequently their width was little more than that of the small car, and
Caroline had to wrench her imagination away from what might happen if Betsy,
at her unaccustomed wheel, should meet another ear head-on and should not
react quickly enough.

She and Paul, fortunately, overtook none and met only one—a smaller version
of Betsy’s which gave no warning of its approach, bucketing round a hairpin
bend, its lights clashing with their own, and causing Paul to make his horn yell,
to whip his steering wheel over and to curse the driver under his breath.

That was shortly before the road levelled out to become a motoring right of
way through the mimosa, and a little further on, at another corner, Paul had to
“stand on everything” to avoid running into the back of his own car, drawn up
directly ahead.

He said, “So!” at the same moment as Caroline breathed, “Betsy—” But as

Betsy jumped out and ran back to them none of their attention was for her but
only for the wreathing, insidious menace which had stopped her and would have
halted them.

Smoke. Pillars of it, corresponding to the woody stems up which it crept,

fanning out as the breeze caught it, drifting across the road, mushrooming
against the background of the darkening sky and here and there breaking into
sporadic bursts of flame.

“Mon dieu!” Paul muttered. Out of the car, he thrust Betsy aside so roughly
that she almost fell, and then was running, tying his handkerchief, mask-wise,
over his nose and mouth as he went.

Petrified, the girls watched the grey curtain lick round him, envelope him.
Then Betsy was babbling.

“Caro, I only took his car on the spur of the moment—really! He lets Ariane
drive it, so why shouldn’t I? And I was so mad with him that I simply had to get
back at him somehow. Besides, it was all right at first, once I’d got the feel of
the car, and there was practically no traffic. Until—until that crazy lunatic came
along. He took the comer where he met me on two wheels, I swear he did! He
hadn’t sounded his horn, and as near as not he had me off the road.”

“I know. We met that car too, so we couldn’t have been as far behind you as
we thought,” Caroline put in.

“Yes, well—after that I completely lost my nerve. I came on because I dared

not turn and go back. And then, when there began to be nothing to it and I felt
better, I saw—that in front!” Betsy finished, gesturing to where Paul had
disappeared.

But before Caroline could reply he was coming back to them.

Betsy ran to him. “Paul, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—” But he detached her
clinging hands and looked beyond her to Caroline.

He said rapidly, “There’s fire, only smoldering in some places, getting a hold
in others, for a hundred metres or so ahead. On the right it goes deeper than I’ve
gone in. The road is forming a natural fire-break, so on the left it’s as yet no
more than some random jumped sparks which I hope I’ve stamped out. But the
rest is creeping on towards one of the areas we haven’t cleared yet and is going
to rampage if it gets there. And so—” now he addressed Betsy for the first time
—“you and Caroline are taking your car to get help. Hop in!”

She twisted from under his propelling hand.

“I can’t drive through that! Not without you, please, Paul! I simply haven’t got
what it takes—”

“Then you must find what it takes.” His tone brooked no argument. “I’m not
coming. I’ve got to stay here and do what I can—start cutting another fire-break,
for one thing. But you needn’t drive through it; less than half a kilometre behind
you there’s a fork that will take you on to the road that comes out behind the
villa, and you ought to make it in under half an hour. When you get there, ring
Fire at both Villon and Grasse and call Berthin too. Yes, and for good measure,
you can also ring Grasse 0-38, ask to speak to Ariane, apologize to her for me,
ask if her host can see her back to Cannes and tell her where I am. And now step
on it, there’s a good child. There’s no time to spare.”

Dumbly, obediently, she got into the driving seat and switched on as he went
to open the other door for Caroline, though holding her back for a moment as
she was about to get in.

For her ears, not for Betsy’s, he said, “I daren’t be kinder, or she’ll go all to
pieces, and she’s got to get this car downhill. But when you get her home, do all
the rest for her, will you, Caro, including ringing Ariane?”

“Yes, of course.” At a sudden spurt of flame which lighted the whole scene,
Caroline added, “How could it have happened, Paul? What do you suppose
started it?”

“I don’t have to suppose. If he wanted to keep me guessing, my friend,

whoever he was, should have taken his empty petrol cans away with him.”

Caroline stared. “You mean it was deliberate?”

 Paul nodded. “Arson, no less,” he said, and stood silhouetted against another
burst of flame as Betsy drove away.

CHAPTER NINE

THERE was no sleep that night.

With gratifying promptitude after Caroline’s telephone call Villon’s small fire
engine roared up, stopping at the villa while one of the four-man crew confirmed
the exact location of the fire. The others of the volunteer brigade were at the
Fete and would be joining forces with those from Grasse and travelling up with
them.

Berthin, on his way up, looked in for a moment. Such other volunteers as he
had been able to contact were already speeding up to Fragonard by truck and car
and even, in the case of two brother workers on the estate, by mule. He himself
was taking five men with him in the station wagon, and he promised the girls
they should have any good news there might be.

After that they could see by the winking lights of Villon that the little place,
normally asleep not long after dark, was as alert and awake as they were, and
intermittently for an hour afterwards there was the roar of other cars’ and
motorcycles taking belated helpers up the mountain road past the villa. Then
there was silence and only the dull glow in the northern sky which told its own
grim story.

Marie made coffee and the three of them sat together, drinking it and talking.
Marie made much of the drama of her memories of similar disasters. But born
and bred as she was to the region’s acceptance of the forest fire as its chief
hazard, she was reassuring as to the outcome.

“Ah, they are bad—bad when they happen,” she agreed. “But here we tell each
other that le bon dieu who wills them has also given us the stout-hearted men to
fight them. And always, but always! it is the men who win in the end. As it will
be this time, you will see!”
 “It’s good to think so. But it seems the one tonight didn’t just happen,”
Caroline told her quietly.

The girl’s eyes rounded. “L’incendie prémédité? You mean this,

Mademoiselle?”

“Monsieur Pascal believed so.” And Caroline told of the evidence of the petrol
cans Paul had found.

“But who could do such a thing? Who could bear enough enmity against either
Monsieur Berthin or Monsieur Paul to bring themselves to do a wickedness like
that? Ah, bien entendu,” Marie shook her head, “one knows there are, here and
there, masters of estates who almost deserve it. But not of Prairies Pascal! For
this is a happy—” But there Marie checked, surprised into silence by the pistol-
shot snap of Betsy’s fingers.

“Got it!” exclaimed Betsy. She turned to Caroline.

“Caro, that car! Oh, you know! The one I—The one you and Paul met, too—”
Her words tumbled over each other. “D’you know what? I caught a glimpse of
the driver. Not a good one; it was darkish, as you know, and I couldn’t swear to
it. But. I’m almost sure now it was Henri Mercier. As Marie was talking just
now a sort of picture of his profile snapped on in my mind—you know that quiff
of hair he wears that makes his face so long? And André was at the Fete. But
Henri wasn’t. And what was he doing coming down from Fragonard at that
breakneck speed at that time of night, I’d like to know!”

Caroline caught her breath. For an intuition similar to that which Betsy was
using on a momentary glimpse of a man’s face was going to work for her too ...
On a recollection of Henri himself, Henri leering, “Arson? There’s a nasty idea
to put into a fellow’s head!” Had she indeed done that? she wondered. And had
Henri acted on it tonight?

But realizing they must not jump to conclusions on such thin evidence, she
said,
 “But even if you were quite sure it was Henri, which you aren’t, he might have
been coming down from higher up the mountain and just passing through
Fragonard, you know.”

“He might,” Betsy allowed. “But if Paul was right and the fire wasn’t an
accident, it seems to me Henri ought to have to tell where he had been, because
ever since that business of the fireworks at Paul’ party he’s made no secret of
meaning to get his own back somehow, has he?”

“But surely he wouldn’t resort to such a terrible way of doing it?”

“You wouldn’t think so. But that man in that car, whoever he was, was running
away from something terrible he had done,” said Betsy sagely, and Caroline,
reluctant as she was to believe it, had to agree.

Dawn was breaking before the telephone rang and Berthin was on the line,
ringing from Paul’s house where the fire fighters had foregathered for drinks
before going home.

“It’s out,” said Berthin tiredly. “By cutting a fire-break we got it under an hour
ago, and we’ve left a patrol up there while the rest of us came down for sleep
before going up again on rota. But there’s little danger of its taking hold again
now.”

“Oh, thank God,” breathed Caroline. She relayed the news to Betsy, who came
to listen in as she said into the receiver, “And wasn’t it an accident, as Paul said
he suspected it wasn’t?”

“Beyond mere suspicion, it was no accident,” Berthin confirmed. “After he

had sent you down for help, Paul found even more incriminating evidence—a
charred handkerchief with the name-tape still legible. And at about the same
time as Grasse got the alarm from you, the police there had it from the fire-raiser
himself. It was that fellow Mercier who made trouble with you that day I took
you over the perfumeries, do you remember?”

“Do you mean he went to the police and confessed to firing the plantation?”
asked Caroline.

“Yes. Apparently he panicked at the size of what he had done, ran for it and
didn’t care so much that he had left the evidence of the petrol cans until he
remembered using his handkerchief to unscrew the cap of one of them and that
he hadn’t brought that away either. He could have taken the risk that it would
never be discovered. But by that time, he says, he had regretted the whole thing,
and claims that it was remorse which took him straight to the police.”

“And what will happen to him now?”

“Less than if he had waited to be found out, as he probably knew,” said

Berthin grimly. “If it’s his first offence of the kind, not too much perhaps. But in
France we don’t arrange these things very quickly, and he’s likely to be kept in
doubt of his fate long enough to teach him that crime doesn’t pay.” Berthin
added then, “By the way, would either you or Betsy care to speak to Paul? I
think he’s just going to snatch a nap, but I can bring him to the phone if you
like.”

Caroline said, “Don’t trouble him for me. But—Do you want to speak to
Paul?” Covering the mouthpiece, she passed the message to Betsy, who
hesitated, then refused the proffered receiver with a shake of her head.

“No,” she said—and avoided Caroline’s eyes as the latter hung up. For a
moment or two she seemed to be waiting to be questioned; then, with the air of a
child disappointed that a planned mischief had not been noticed, she asked, “I
daresay that was something you didn’t expect, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I thought you would surely want to have a word with Paul,” Caroline
told her.

“Oh, you did? And to say what? To creep again to him about having taken his
wretched car, and to collect another brush-off like the last? No, thank you!”

Caroline protested, “Oh, Bet, be your age! When you told him you were sorry,
he’d got a forest fire on his hands. Did you really expect him to take time out
then to pat you on the shoulder and say something like, That’s all right, honey. I
realize you were provoked into it, and I assure you that All Is Forgiven and we
won’t speak of it again’?”

“And who would have known anything about the fire, if I hadn’t driven up
there and found it burning?” Betsy countered.

“You’ve got something there, though not much,” Caroline conceded. “Henri
had gone straight down to Grasse and confessed to it himself, remember. So the
alarm would have gone out all the same.”

But Betsy would have none of such reasoned argument. “Paul still needn’t
have looked through me as if I didn’t exist. Nor been so brutal with his orders
—‘Then you’ll have to find what it takes’,” she mimicked sourly. “Nor insisted
on my ringing Ariane to make his beastly apologies. He , could take time out for
that all right!”

“You didn’t telephone Ariane. I did,” Caroline pointed out.

“But he wasn’t to know that. He knew how I should hate explaining it all to
her, and it was his way of paying me out over the car. Besides,” Betsy raced on,
forestalling Caroline’s contradiction of that, “you didn’t hear him earlier, taking
the line of a Dutch uncle when I had nerved myself to tell him about Edward,
expecting, that at least he wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know why I’d told him!”

“Bet dear, he did realize you were hurt by his advising you to go back to
England. He told me so. But what else could he say, when he doesn’t love you
himself and you must know he doesn’t?” urged Caroline.

“Then if he doesn’t, what about the way he kissed me at his party? I didn’t
throw myself at his head or into his arms that night, and it wasn’t—it wasn’t
anything like the kind of cool pass you say he made at you later,” Betsy claimed
wildly. “And do you imagine I’d have let him or encouraged him, if I’d known
he was going to turn round and slap me in the face as he did tonight? I’ve got a
bit more pride than that, I should hope!”
 “You sound as if you had found some at last where Paul is concerned.”

“I certainly have. That’s why I wouldn’t speak to him on the phone. Now it’s
up to him. At least Edward never blew hot and cold with me like that. And do
you know what I’d do if Edward were here now? I’d flaunt him at Paul, just to
show that someone appreciates me if he doesn’t!”

“How pleasant for Edward,” Caroline murmured. “But since he isn’t here to be
used as a decoy duck, what about taking your gesture against Paul a step further
and going home as soon as we can make the necessary arrangements?”

But that, it seemed, was beyond Betsy’s resolve. “Go home?” she echoed as
she had done the first time Caroline had suggested it. “Oh, I don’t know. After
all, I’ve got to give Paul a bit of chance to come round and be nice to me again,
haven’t I?”

“Have you?” said Caroline, not asking a question but simply ending an
unrewarding argument.

All that day there was no talk anywhere but of the fire, and a constant stream
of sightseers trekking past the villa on their way to view the damage.

After snatching some sleep during the morning, the girls meant to go up
themselves in the afternoon. But by then, for the first time since Caroline’s
arrival, the weather broke in torrential rain and thunder, and they decided to go
the next day instead.

Meanwhile Caroline was on the tenterhooks of her expectation of the

Transatlantic call or cable which Mrs. Lane had promised her. On that account,
when Betsy grew restless in the evening and suggested they should go down to
Cannes and see a film, Caroline staged a diplomatic headache and Betsy went
alone.

But there was no word from Mrs. Lane that night, and the next morning, when
they woke to still continuing rain, Caroline remembered something less
important she was waiting for—her purchases from Ariane’s shop which Witold
Czinner had promised to send, but which had not yet arrived.

However, supposing Witold had not yet been able to price the prints, she
thought no more of them until late in the morning when Marie brought in the
parcel, saying it had just been delivered by hand. A typewritten envelope was
tucked beneath the string, and this, Caroline laid aside while she unpacked the
parcel and invited Betsy’s rather grudging approval of its contents.

“Yes. Lovely. But what made you go to Ariane’s for them?” Betsy wanted to
know.

“Because when Witold Czinner suggested Vallauris pottery it seemed a good

idea, and I gather he knows more about any kind of ceramics than most people.”

“Well, I bet Ariane will have made you pay through the nose for them. What’s
this—the bill?” added Betsy, reaching for the accompanying letter and flicking it
into Caroline’s lap.

“I expect so. Witold wasn’t able to tell me—Why, what’s this?” Caroline
finished as, instead of the promised invoice, she unfolded a handwritten letter
with no address heading and an enclosure which fluttered to the floor.

A glance at the first few lines of the letter and she was refolding it. But Betsy
had retrieved the enclosure and was staring at it open-mouthed. “This is no bill,
Caro! It’s a cheque ... From Paul to—Ariane. For—for a huge amount.” Her
voice shook. “For three thousand new francs! That’s—that’s—Oh, what is it in
English money?” she appealed blankly to Caroline.

Caroline held out her hand for the cheque. “Around two hundred pounds. But
it’s a mistake. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be sent to me, any more than this
was,” she said, indicating the letter she held herself.

“But what is that?”

“Nothing... None of our business, anyway.”

 “None of our—! It was sent to you, wasn’t it?

Is it a letter to go with the cheque? One from him to—her?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be signed, and I’ve never seen Paul’s writing
that I can recall.”

“Neither have I. But you know that it is, don’t you? While you were looking at
it, you read enough for that?”

“I think so. But—”

“You mean it’s a love letter and it does go with the cheque. I can see that from
your face. What does it say?”

“I’ve told you—it’s no affair of ours!”

“Well, I’m making it mine! Don’t you see I must know what it’s all in aid of?
You didn’t ask Ariane to send you her private correspondence instead of a bill,
and if you won’t read the rest of that letter, I tell you I mean to—”

But though Betsy snatched it and unfolded it she stared at it

uncomprehendingly. “I can’t read it. It’s in French,” she said.

“From Paul to Ariane—naturally. Now please give it back to me,” Caroline

ordered.

“Not unless you tell me what it says, as far as you read. And if you won’t, I’ll
—I’ll take it out to Marie. Between us, I daresay, we can work it out,” Betsy
defied.

“Betsy, no!”

“I will! So are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”

 Caroline gave in. Betsy meant to know, and while she withheld the letter, had
the whiphand.

“All right, though you’re going to wish you hadn’t made me. From the context
it must be from Paul to Ariane, because it opens with an apology for breaking a
luncheon date with her today, owing to his having to go to Nice about the fire
insurance assessment for Fragonard—”

“How does he address her? What does he call her?” Betsy broke in.

“ ‘Ma precieuise—’ ”

Betsy winced. “All right. Go on.”

“Then he says he is enclosing ‘the monthly usual’ and teases her about not
spending it all at once, even if she does know there is always more for her where
it comes from. That’s all, and I’m not going to read any further for you or
anyone else,” Caroline finished.

A finger to her bottom lip to check its quivering, Betsy said, “I don’t want you
to. That’s enough. Here, take the thing back. The monthly usual! The monthly
usual!—three thousand francs! That means—Caro, it’s horrible. He’s paying her
... keeping her there on the Croisette in that flat, like a—like a common—!”

Oblivious to her own pain, Caroline cut in sharply, “Betsy, that’ll do! Don’t
torture yourself so!”

Betsy, white-faced, turned on her. “I’m not torturing myself—don’t think it!
I’m only shocked that I could be such a fool as to believe in him, when everyone
else knew him for the outsider he really is. He and Ariane haven’t been waiting
to marry. They’ve been—all this while!” She shuddered. “And to think I
wouldn’t listen to those stories about that other girl, the one who was killed.
He’d been keeping her too ... just history repeating itself, that’s all. Oh, I hate
him, hate him, I tell you! And if he were here now I couldn’t trust myself to
speak to him or let him touch me with a bargepole.”
 “Then you couldn’t have loved him all that much, if you can condemn him and
hate him quite suddenly, without giving him a hearing. Besides,” added
Caroline, “whatever there may be between him and Ariane, you’ve no right to
compare it to his relations with Fanchon Raguse. Because Simone Latour has
talked to me about that. She knew Fanchon well, and I think her faith in them
both would convince even you that there was nothing scandalous between her
and Paul at all.”

“Simone Latour! She’d walk the gangplank for Paul if he asked it of her,”
sneered Betsy. “And if there was nothing wrong, why didn’t he come clean
about it? Oh, no, it’s all of a piece with—this. And this has made me realize I
never want to set eyes on him again—ever. It’s as simple as that.”

Caroline shook her head. “I don’t understand you. I’d have expected you to be
shocked and bewildered and vexed, but not that you could hate him as suddenly
as all this. You don’t ‘love’ one minute and ‘hate’ the next. You get disillusioned
and the bottom drops out of your world. But loving, I’m convinced, only stops
gradually. It has to ease up, as any pain must, given time. But you can’t throw it
away at will, any more than you could throw away a headache saying, ‘It’s all
right. It’s gone. I haven’t got it any more’.”

“Well, so maybe I didn’t really love him. Anyway, whatever I felt for him, I
must have been round the bend. If I give you that, does that please you? It ought
to, considering the pains you’ve always been to, to convince me I was!”

“Oh, Bet, do you think I want to fling ‘I told you so’ in your face? It’s simply
that I question why you could forgive Paul for Fanchon Raguse and all the rest,
yet suddenly be able to hate him now,” protested Caroline.

“Why, because it adds up ... fits, of course. There was Fanchon. Now there’s
Ariane—in the same way. That’s what sticks, Carol—the same way. It even
explains why he hasn’t bothered to marry her, even to get Pascal back. He must
know he’s sure of her whenever he chooses, and it makes him—well, just
another Frenchman, not waiting to marry but having an affair on the side as if he
were married. That’s what makes the very thought of him sort of—tarnished,
and makes me only too thankful for Edward, even if I hadn’t begun to be a bit
grateful for him already.”

“You had? Since when?”

“I’m not sure. Since the night before last, I think, when Paul was so
unsympathetic and cool. But I was still besotted with him then and I was only
using Edward as a foil, a kind of sheet anchor. Whereas now—quite suddenly—
I can hardly wait to see him again, and what’s more I don’t mean to, any longer
than I can help.”

As Betsy finished speaking she crossed to the bureau where she swept papers,
letters and writing materials from its pigeonholes and continued on round the
room, adding oddments of her personal belongings to the collection while
Caroline’s perplexed gaze followed her.

“Bet, what are you doing?”

Betsy turned. “Clearing up. Beginning to pack. Getting ready to go home. It’ll
be no fault of mine if we’re not out of this house and on our way by tonight,”
she declared.

“But you can’t go—just like that!”

“Who says I can’t? You should talk, considering how often you’ve suggested
it! The last time, only yesterday morning, remember?”

“I meant you can’t just walk out without giving Paul proper notice.”

“You’d be surprised! Oh, don’t worry, I’m not bilking him. I’ll send him a
week’s rent in lieu—that was the agreement, failing notice—and leave the key
with Marie. Meanwhile I’m going to ring up for seats on the first plane out that
we can catch or that can take us—That is, assuming you’re coming with me, and
I hope you are?”

Caroline said, “Yes, I’ll come. But not by air and not today. I’ve promised to
stop off in Paris to see my friends the Chaussins, so I shall go back the way I
came. And not today, because it simply isn’t fair on Paul to go as you plan—
without a word of explanation and on a day when we know from his letter to
Ariane that he’s away from home and almost certainly wouldn’t learn that we’d
gone until we had. Besides—”

There, however, Betsy cut in desperately, “Oh, Caro, don’t you see that’s why
we’ve got to go today if we can get away? Because I want to be gone before he
can get in touch? Because I don’t want to see him again, or hear his voice or
have anything to do with him again—ever? I don’t care how we go, as long as
we do. If we can get sleepers on tonight’s Paris train, we’ll catch that—But what
did you mean just now—‘Besides’?”

“Something I hadn’t told you about the morning I went to Cannes to buy those
—” Caroline indicated her purchases. “Before I came back again I put in a call
to Aunt Clio and spoke to her.”

“You rang Mummy! Why?”

“Because Witold Czinner had told me that Ariane plans to close the salon very
soon, which seemed to me to mean only one thing. And as I was convinced that
if only you could see Edward again sooner than you expected, you might have
second thoughts about Paul, I rang Aunt Clio to ask her if it could anyhow be
arranged.”

Betsy’s eyes widened, brightened. “Caro, bless you! But why on earth didn’t
you tell me? And what did Mummy say?”

“She couldn’t promise anything, but she was going to do what she could, and
I’ve been expecting a call or a cable from her every minute since.”

“You’ve heard nothing at all from her?”

“Not yet, though I shall, because she promised. But you see, don’t you, that it
makes another reason why we can’t light out from here as you want to, in case,
when she did ring, we’d already gone?”
 “Oh, it doesn’t, it doesn’t!” Betsy clamored. “Look, even if we’re catching the
night train, we’ve got hours and hours yet. I can book a call to her now and
almost certainly get through to her before we have to leave, to explain we’re on
our way, which ought to please her. And if she rings or cables in the meantime,
so much the better. Oh, please, please, Caro—agree to come with me as soon as
we can pack and get out of this place! Because I’ve got to go. I must. I’ve done
for good with head-pattings from Paul and Ariane’s gloating, and even if they
don’t send Edward back at once, at least I mean to be in England waiting for
him when he does come, if he does—Caro dear, try, please, to see just what it
means to me!”

But suddenly Caroline knew, a flash of compassionate insight telling her that
Betsy’s sore pride needed the healing gesture of action; of an escape which she
saw as her one face-saving cut across a situation which had suddenly turned
enemy on her. Later, more tolerant, less vulnerable, she might look back and
wonder that she hadn’t waited to face Paul and Ariane too with all the poise she
could muster. But now, in the moment of needing it most, she had none to call
on. Escape was her only weapon; she had to use it now, and with dramatic haste
or not at all, and Caroline must help her...

Caroline said gently, “All right, Bet, we’ll go. But listen—we’ve got to leave
everything in order. Telephone, household accounts, inventory, board wages for
Marie in lieu of notice, the outstanding rent.”

“Yes, yes, I promise I’ll see to everything! Let’s see, what comes first? To
book our sleepers, don’t you think, and then put in a call to Mummy?” Betsy
appealed, looking up from her hurried scrawl of a list of “musts.”

“I suppose so. But there’s something else where I’m concerned. Whether you
like it or not, I’m not going without saying goodbye to Ursule and to Berthin.”

Betsy frowned. “How can you, without having to tell them why we’re going so
suddenly?”

“You must leave that to me. I shall probably say you’ve been urgently recalled
to England for family reasons. But they’ve been so kind to me that I must go
over there before we leave,” said Caroline.

“Do you want me to drive you?”

“No, I can walk. I’ll do your telephoning for you first and talk to Marie. Then
I’ll leave you to see to packing for us both and we’ll finish off all the rest
together when I get back. I shan’t be too long, I hope.”

“And what about—that?” Betsy demanded, pointing.

Caroline looked down at the cheque and the letter she still held. “I’ll deal with
that too,” she said.

She purposely went over to the cottage at a time when she could expect
Berthin would be home for luncheon. But today he was not there. Full of her
usual welcome for Caroline, Ursule told her he had accompanied Paul to Nice to
meet the fire assessors and she did not know when to expect him back.

At Caroline’s news Ursule grumbled, “Such a sad errand for you to come on,
my dear—to bid us goodbye at this short notice and long before I thought to see
you go! Tell me, even if Betsy has to go, must you really go too?”

“She wants me to, and as I couldn’t stay much longer in any case, we thought
it best to close the villa and go together,” said Caroline.

“Bah, the villa! Close it, by all means. But, short while or long, why could you
not consider spending the rest of your holiday here with us?” Ursule wanted to
know.

Caroline shook her head. “It’s awfully kind of you, Ursule, and I know you
mean it. But really I always meant to go back when Betsy did, and we’ve made
nearly all our arrangements now.”

“But you will come back? For Noel, perhaps? Or if you must have the sun, in
the spring for Easter? And at worst, next summer? On this I insist!”
 Caroline forced her stiff lips to a smile. “I’d love to, but I musn’t promise.”

“But you will write to us, tell us all that you are doing?”

“Of course.”

Ursule went on, “Not that we shall be here ourselves much longer, one
supposes, now that Paul gives Berthin to understand he means to marry very
soon, and Berthin, for all my hopes, seems to be as far from such a decision of
his own as he ever was. Yet imagine, Caroline! Gabriel Pascal’s will gives him
the chance of a lifetime and he lets it slip through his fingers for the sake of a
sentimental memory of a boy’s amour and for want of a marriage which any
other man I know would be glad to make! I mean marriage to you, my dear, as I
think you know. But when I tax him, what does he say? That he is pretty sure
Gabriel meant it to be this way; that Pascal is rightly Paul’s heritage, not his, and
that he is more than content to have it so. And what, I ask, you, can one reply to
betise like that?”

“But it makes sense to him,” Caroline pointed out. “He told me once he was
convinced Paul’s father knew Paul was likely to marry first, and that he only
wanted to give Paul a sharp lesson. And Berthin said too that though he was
doing his best by the estate for Paul’s sake, he could hardly wait to get back to
his own work as a research botanist. So I think you can be sure he really does
see his control of the estate as an interruption to that, and that he’ll be only too
glad to hand over to Paul when the time comes.”

Ursule bridled. “And what about me? Haven’t I the right to some ambition on
his behalf?”

“But only if it’s the same ambition as his, surely?”

“Ah, but there’s the trouble—he has none of his own!”

“He must have—in his own line. What’s more, I don’t believe you could
possibly want him to marry, simply to clinch his possession of Pascal,” Caroline
urged.
 “I’d have been happy to see him marry you—for love,” Ursule claimed
doggedly. Then she shrugged. “But perhaps you’re right, and it's best that we
turn into a couple of old celibates, side by side, Berthin with his test-tubes and
me with my saucepans—Which reminds me, my dear. You must take with you
back to England a couple of the cream cheeses I took from the press this
morning, and a bottle of my acacia blossom wine which, however, you must
promise not to open until at least a year from the date on the label. Come, let’s
go and select one and see if there is anything else you fancy in my cellar or my
buttery.”

In the end the number of things—from dried herbs to patés—which she

wanted to press on Caroline were only limited by the latter’s doubts as to what
she could take past the Customs. As it was, they necessitated her borrowing a
basket which, should Berthin return from Nice in time, Ursule promised he
should go over to the villa to collect and to see if there was anything he could do
for the girls.

But before she left Caroline had a favor to ask Ursule; the use of her telephone
for a call and its reply which Caroline preferred Betsy should not overhear.

As she waited Caroline was aware of the quickened beat of her heart. Then the
receiver at the other end was lifted and Ariane’s rich voice said in French, “Ici le
Salon Ariane. Oui?”

Deliberately in English, for the razor’s edge of disadvantage to which it would

put the other woman, Caroline said, “Caroline Neville here. I’m ringing because
I think there must have been some mistake over the invoice which should have
come with some things I bought from your shop the other day, Madame
Lescure.”

A tiny pause. Then Ariane chided, “ ‘Madame’ Lescure? Dear me, how formal
you are, Caroline chérie! What have I done to deserve ‘Madame’ at this stage of
our friendship? However, a mistake over your invoice, you say? You have
received the goods safely, but you think we have charged you too much, is that
it?”
 “No. I mean that, instead of the bill which Monsieur Czinner promised to send
in the parcel, something else had been sent by mistake. If it was a mistake,”
Caroline added significantly.

“If it was—! Now you are being really obscure!” But though Caroline could
envisage the pucker of Ariane’s expressive brows, she was convinced her
random arrow had gone home. Now they were on level terms and Ariane knew
it. But she allowed another silence to ensue before she laughed shortly.

“And may one ask what you did receive instead of the compte you expected?”
she asked.

“I have an idea you may know,” Caroline told her. “It was a personal letter
written to you and a cheque made out in your name, and I hardly think Monsieur
Czinner could have sent either of them to me in mistake for a bill.”

At least Ariane made no false show of surprise. “But you suggest I might have
done—on purpose?”

“I believe so. You knew you could reckon on my returning them safely, but
you thought I should be puzzled enough to discuss them with Betsy first, which
was what you wanted. And if it was, you should be satisfied, because she was
there when I opened the parcel and it was she who looked at the cheque while I
couldn’t help reading the first few lines of the letter.”

This time the silence held long enough for Caroline to doubt whether Ariane
was still on the line. But then—

“Quite the astute detective, aren’t you?” she mocked. “And supposing I admit
to my little ruse, don’t I get any credit for it?”

“Credit?”

“Why not? Now I thought it an adroit, even a gentle way of letting your silly
young cousin learn just how matters stand between Paul Pascal and me.”
 “Gentle? It was about the cruellest thing you could have done to her!”
Caroline exploded.

“Oh, surely not? After all, it was time she was brought to her senses and
cleared out of Paul’s way and of mine. So as I reckoned you wouldn’t be able to
resist reading Paul’s letter—”

“I read only as little as caught my eye at a glance!”

“No matter. It seems to have been enough. Anyway, it seemed to me that it and
the cheque together should break Betsy’s fall, as one says. Or I wonder—would
you rather I had taken her aside one fine morning and told her in so many words
exactly how very well Paul and I understand each other, which would have
probably have shocked her English prudery—yours too, I daresay—even
more?”

Caroline said bluntly, “If you ask me, it couldn’t matter less. You meant us, to
deduce that you’re Paul’s mistress; and you’ve succeeded, and my only query is
that you don’t seem to mind that we might spread the news amongst our mutual
friends?”

“Ah, but there I pride myself on being a little subtle on my own behalf! Not
that my friends or Paul’s are likely to lose any sleep over our morals, would you
say? But just in case, I argued, you see, that neither you nor Betsy would
probably care to admit that the source of your gossip was what it was. A private
letter. A cheque sent to you in error. And so—”

“Yes. I see,” Caroline cut in. “You make yourself quite clear. But as it
happens, you needn’t have worried even so little that we might talk, since Betsy
and I are leaving for England tonight.”

“Leaving? So soon?”

“Yes. Betsy has to go for urgent family reasons and I’m going too.” There had
been such gratification in Ariane’s tone that Caroline uttered the lie without
compunction before adding, “Meanwhile, I’m returning your property to you by
post, and if you can let me have the real bill by hand today, I’ll settle it before I
leave France.”

“That? Oh, my dear, think nothing of it! A mere bagatelle—!”

“It’s money I owe you and I mean to pay it,” said Caroline crisply, and hung
up before she was tempted to put a question to which she dreaded the answer.

For the possibility that Paul had been a party to Ariane’s piece of contrived
cruelty towards Betsy was something she knew she could not bear to hear.

She said her goodbyes to Ursule, wishing she could echo with truth the latter’s
warm “Au ’voir” and returned to the villa to find Betsy crowing with
excitement.

“Caro, Mummy has rung up at last to say—what do you think? Edward is in

Paris! Or no, that’s not right. He isn’t there yet, but he’s on his way and he’ll be
there before we are,” she bubbled.

Caroline stared blankly. “Edward in Paris? How on earth—?”

“I knew you’d be struck all of a heap, as I was,” Betsy triumphed. “But

according to Mummy she didn’t have to pull any strings because that cunning
old fox, Daddy, had already decided to reward Edward for the good job he’s
made of the Argentine deal by sending him to Paris to clinch one with a chain of
delicatessen stores, so that he and I could meet there when he put it through.
Daddy, the dear innocent, planned it as a surprise for me, and I just shudder,
Caro, to think how I might have let him down. Edward too, the lamb—Anyway,
he’s due in this evening; I’ve got the telephone number of his hotel, and now
you’re going to ring there and leave a message for him to meet us off the train at
the Gare de Lyon in the morning. O.K.?”

“Yes, I’ll do it now.” On her way to the telephone Caroline asked, “I suppose
you told Aunt Clio we’d already decided to leave here and take in Paris on our
way home?”
 “Of course, and if the darling had climbed Everest unaided she couldn’t have
sounded more ‘mission accomplished’ pleased. Because she did send you down
here for the express purpose of winkling me away from Paul, didn’t she?”

“More or less, though only on her hunch that you were getting too involved
with someone, she didn’t know who.”

Betsy nodded. “I knew it. Trust Mummy’s flair for sizing up a problem and
then always—but always!—being able to persuade some willing horse to solve
it for her! But you know, Caro, I think I can say I’ve got cured of Paul under my
own steam, whether or not you believe that I really am.”

Caroline assured her, “Dear, I do believe it, and I think you’ve realized the
kind of bumper-value you’ve got in Edward by comparison. All I doubted, and
still do a bit, is this hatred for Paul that you claim to have switched on. Because
one doesn’t. One can’t—at once. Whatever a man has done to you, if you loved
him there are still too many sweet things to remember about him and to regret
—”

“I suppose you’re quoting Roy Sanders and how you felt about him?” queried
Betsy.

“In a way, yes.” Caroline paused. And then, on the sweeping insistent tide of
the knowledge that she owed Betsy the truth, she turned and raised candid,
troubled eyes to her cousin’s face.

“But not only Roy. I’m quoting Paul too,” she said.

“Paul?” By some trick of emphasis or intonation Betsy’s echo carried both

bewilderment and infinite understanding. “You mean—Paul? You too?”

Caroline nodded. “Me too, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, Caro! I never guessed! Tell me.”

Caroline told her the bittersweet all there was to tell.

CHAPTER TEN

SEVERAL hours later, only giving themselves time to hand over the little car
before boarding the Paris train, they went down to Cannes, everything else they
had had to do done and behind them.

Both were silent now, silent but closer in sympathy than they had ever been.
For nothing could better have proved Betsy’s conviction of her own “cure” than
the complete lack of reproach or jealousy with which she had received
Caroline’s story. In a way, Caroline felt, her own confession to loving Paul had
lent Betsy stature and poise; made her the level-headed one who had freed
herself of his menace in time and for good, and turned Caroline into the weaker
vessel who admitted herself still held in the toils of his charm. Or if not all this,
in Betsy’s eyes at least they were now ranged on the same side, equals and on
the defensive together against the common enemy which Betsy was determined
to make Paul for Caroline’s sake as much as for her own.

But for the time being they had talked the subject out before they left the villa
and on the journey down to the coast, both oppressed by a sense of endings, of
“last times,” of gay things they would not do again in that setting, they spoke
very little, and then only seldom of the thoughts they shared.

Once Betsy said obliquely, “Pretty grim, come to think of it, how this whole
stretch of the Riviera from, say, Fréjus to Nice is going to be closed country to
us both until we’ve forgotten all this,” to which Caroline agreed with a laconic
“Yes” and nothing more.

Then again Betsy—“This I’ve got to say. If none of it were true; I mean,
supposing it all turned out to be a bad dream, which of course it can’t, you do
know, don’t you, Caro, that I’ve really settled for Edward and I wouldn’t grudge
you Paul at all?”
 Caroline’s answering smile was grateful but faint. “I think I do know,” she
said. “But it isn’t a bad dream. It’s happening. And even if Ariane wasn’t around
and if Paul hadn’t committed himself to her, I’ve always known he’s only seen
me as an adjunct to you or, at best, as a handy tinder to sharpen his charm on.”

“Oh, no, more than that,” Betsy protested. “He really liked you; he said so.”

Caroline summoned the ghost of a smile again. “Fair enough—except that,

when you’ve no more hope of finding yourself loved than of getting the moon
by crying for it, hearing you’re ‘liked’ instead doesn’t help much.”

Betsy nodded emphatic agreement with that. “Don’t I know it? Because Paul
liked me too, and while I was idiot enough to care for him it used to make me as
furious as it does now to remember that I let it matter—” Thus Betsy uttered the
epitaph of her feeling for Paul, leaving Caroline to wish that she could echo it,
but knowing she could not.

They left their luggage at the station before delivering the car to the garage
from which it had been hired. Betsy parted from it with a pat on its bonnet and a
rather wistful, “Wonder who’ll be driving you next?” Then they took a taxi back
to the station and had only ten minutes to wait before their train was due.

They had each been allotted single sleepers at opposite ends of a long coach.
But before going to settle in them they stood in the corridor while the train
moved out, remaining there for a time in order to catch their last glimpses of the
matchless coastline and the red-sailed boats setting out for the evening fishing
on the greenish, creaming sea.

It was almost full dark as the train slowed for the St. Raphael stop. The girls
parted then to go to their berths, agreeing to meet again later for the first dinner
session in the dining car. In her compartment Caroline unpacked her toilet and
night things and was washing her hands when there was a knock at the door and
the coach attendant looked in.

“Ah, Madame, you are here now. Just to see you have everything you need,
and to check your ticket and reservation—No hurry, however. I can come
again.”

“No, wait. You can have them now.” Drying her hands, Caroline reached for
her bag. But in the moment of her handing the papers to the man their
recognition of each other was instant and mutual.

He grinned, “So? It is Madame who rightly travels with me this time, not
Monsieur! I hope you have enjoyed a good holiday in the sun, Madame?”

“Very, thank you.”

He filed away her reservations in his wallet. “These I keep until we reach Paris
in the morning—You should not have thought Monsieur meant any harm,
Madame. Agreed, he was forward, even bold. But what I ask myself, is the
worth of a man who cannot ask for what he wants? It remains the lady’s
privilege to say yes or no to him. But as long as he has asked, believing she may
say yes, though she says, no, what has he to lose?”

This was Caroline’s moment.

Savoring it. “To lose? Why, surely only one train on the Metro, with plenty of
others to come along?” she said evenly, though as soon as the words were out
she could not resist meeting the man’s abashed chagrin with a smile.

He shrugged, spreading his hands. “Quel malheur! You have held this against
me for all these weeks, Madame? This is too bad of you, and if I may say so,
you have far too sharp ears!”

“Evidently!”

“But there! You are smiling. You have forgiven me now? And if Monsieur
were here, you might even be a little kinder to him—no?”

But at that Caroline’s smile faded, as did the brief illusion they were talking of
the stranger Paul had been to her then and as this man believed he still was.
“Perhaps. But Monsieur isn’t here,” she said.

“No. A pity. For I was wrong, and sometimes one train on the Metro has
something which the others haven’t... But what would you? That’s life, and a
missed chance is a missed chance, lost for ever.” His hand on the door on his
way out, the man paused. “Not—if I may say this too without offence—that
Madame need fear there will not be many other messieurs from which she may
pick and choose, I think!” Then he was gone, leaving Caroline more shaken by
the little encounter than she would have cared to admit.

Betsy, who was not a good traveller by train, had said she would give her
travel pill time to work before going to the dining car, so Caroline did not hurry
over her own pottering and was sitting looking out of the window when there
was another knock at the door.

“Come in.” Supposing that this time it would be for the making up of her
berth, she rose and was ready to leave as the door opened, then closed again
behind the entrant.

“Paul?” Her hands went to cup her cheeks in surprise and dismay and to hide
their flaming. “How—? Why—?”

As assured as ever, he retorted, “How? You may well ask. By the skin of my
teeth at St. Raphael. Ever tried racing an express on a handicap? You should. It’s
good, clean fun ... Why? You shouldn’t have to ask, and anyway it’s not your
question—it’s mine. Didn’t I warn you of the consequences if you and Betsy
tried this kind of caper?”

.Caroline stammered, “Yes, but—That is, we—didn’t. Betsy settled everything

before we left, and explained why she had to go suddenly in the note Marie took
up to your house, along with the key of the villa and the rent in lieu of notice.”

He nodded. “Yes, I got her note. Not that you expected me to believe a word of
it, surely? ‘Urgent family reasons’! Which of you thought that one up as a
blind?”
 “I did.”

He pounced in triumph. “So it was a blind! How did one guess? But now let’s
have the truth. Was it a cover for Betsy’s sudden need to escape—or yours?”

Her eyes dropped before the shrewd accusation in his.

“If you didn’t believe Betsy’s note to you, you should ask her for the truth,”
she evaded.

“If it was only Betsy who decided she’d got to run away, I can wait to hear her
tell me why,” he countered. “After all, I risked breaking my neck to catch this
train in order to bribe my way into your compartment, not Betsy’s. Doesn’t that
say anything to you?”

“I—don’ know what you mean to say.”

“Or you’re not interested? All right, skip it while we get to grips with the rest.
Assuming these secret reasons for your flitting were mainly Betsy’s, they seem
to have had a strong enough pull to take you along too. So what were they?”

Under his scrutiny and the relentless pressure of his questions Caroline felt
like a pinioned moth. But she made an effort to free herself.

“Simply that Betsy begged me to leave with her, and whenever she went, you
knew I meant to go with her,” she told him.

“That’s no answer to my question. I don’t believe you’d have agreed to go in

this backhanded way if you hadn’t felt equally strongly over whatever took her
off at the gallop.”

One more effort “Well, she decided to go tonight when she heard from her
mother that her fiancé was flying in to Paris from the Argentine today,” Caroline
said, only for Paul’s devastating logic to tear right across the evasion.
 “After bending over backwards to keep him at a distance until after she had
jilted him?”

“She isn’t jilting him now. In fact, she can hardly wait to see him.”

“I’m very glad to hear it, the dear little weathercock. But if a dash to her—
what’s his name?—Edward’s side had been her sole reason, she’d have said so.
So come now, let’s have what it really was, shall we?” he invited.

The moth ceased its fluttering. Caroline said, “It was something that happened
this morning which shocked her into a complete and final revulsion against you.
Or so she claims, and I don’t find it difficult to believe her.”

“Meaning you go all the way in reverse too? Well, that’s understandable. You
hadn’t as far to travel in a recoil from me as Betsy had, had you?”

“That’s not fair! I—”

“All right, though I can’t credit you were able to resist a smug, ‘I told you so.
The fellow was never worth it.’ However, this kill-and-cure of Betsy’s
infatuation for me—how did it come about?”

Caroline told him, taking a thin comfort—which he could destroy at a word

—from seeing his perplexed frown gather and darken as she did so.

He was silent for a moment. Then:

“But I’d written no letter to Ariane in such terms—nor in any others. She
knew I was due with Berthin at Nice today, but I had no date with her, and if I’d
wanted to break one, what’s the telephone for? Yet you say this letter purported
to be from me?”

“Well, it wasn’t signed. But the cheque was,” Caroline reminded him, wishing
he could know how desperately she craved to believe he was as mystified as he
appeared.
 “The cheque—yes. But I’d given that into Ariane’s hands about a week ago. It
was for her to cash for Witold Czinner’s benefit, to help him to get back to
Warsaw when Ariane closes down the salon shortly.”

“For Monsieur Czinner?”

“None other. I made it payable to Ariane because he has no bank account, and
when she asked me to help him she suggested I should make out a cheque to her,
leaving her to give him the cash. What’s odd about that?”

“Only,” said Caroline, working it out, “that I distinctly remember Ariane

saying once that Monsieur Czinner was too proud to accept help, even from her.
And he had told me himself that though he hadn’t really enough funds,
notwithstanding he meant to go back to Poland on the few he had. Therefore—”

“Therefore,” Paul cut in, “you prefer to believe the context of a letter I did not
write, but from which you and Betsy concluded I’ve been contributing to
Ariane’s living expenses to the tune of three thousand francs a month, with all
the implications of that?”

“What else were we to conclude? But I was really going to say that as, before
she asked you for it, Ariane must have known Witold Czinner would not accept
it, she never meant to offer it to him because she needed it for something else.”

“Come! We’re making headway if I’ve managed to convince you of the truth
of how my cheque came into Ariane’s possession! But I suppose you realize this
amounts to your accusing Ariane of getting money from me on false pretences?”
he queried.

Caroline passed a hand across her brow in the characteristic gesture which
always lifted the forward thrust of her hair.

“Yes, I do realize it may sound like that, and that you find it unthinkable,
Ariane being ... what she is to you. But all I meant to imply was that she needed
a cheque for a large amount, written by you to her. Not to pass on to Witold
Czinner; nor meaning to cash it in her own favor, but simply having to have it
for the purpose for which she used it.”

As Caroline finished speaking she glanced wretchedly at Paul’s face—set,

sterner than she had yet seen it. He said slowly,

“You’re suggesting Ariane planned this; wanted the cheque in order to tie it in
with the phoney letter, so that each seemed to bear out the fact of the other?”

“I’m afraid it looks like it. You see, I know now that the substitution of them
for my bill was no accident. Ariane sent them deliberately, guessing I should
almost certainly show them to Betsy. And if it hadn’t been for the lucky chance
of my expecting to receive a bill from her, I’m sure she would have managed
that Betsy saw them in some other way.”

“How can you know this?” Paul demanded.

“Suspecting it, I rang up Ariane, and she admitted it.”

“But why? What had she against young Betsy, in heaven’s name?”

“She said she had had enough of Betsy’s nuisance value to herself and to you,
and she claimed she thought this was the kindest way of making Betsy
understand just what your relationship was. I’m afraid I told her in my opinion it
was just about the cruellest. But of course she had succeeded. Betsy has
understood at last the size of the thing she has been trying to fight. And though I
left Ariane in no doubt as to what I thought of her shock treatment, I daresay
she’ll be able to convince you she thought she was doing it for the best.”

“On the contrary,” Paul retorted, “she’s going to have no mean task,
persuading me it called for near-forgery and a pack of lies designed to relieve
me of three thousand francs which Czinner was never going to see. Oh, no!
Complacent and easy-conscienced I may be, but I don’t shoot sitting birds like
Betsy. And if you’ve a grain of imagination, surely you have some idea of the
kind of jolt my relations with Ariane have taken with all this?”
 Not without cynicism, Caroline said, “You’ll forgive her in time. One does—”
She paused. Then, softening as always towards him, to something fleetingly
vulnerable in his face, she added, “I’m sorry, Paul. But you should have taken
our excuse for leaving at its face value. Then Ariane would have returned the
cheque to you, probably saying Witold wouldn’t take the money, and you need
never have learned the use she really made of it, if you hadn’t followed us up
like this; if you had allowed us to fade quietly out as we planned.”

He stared—on the attack, nothing unguarded about him now.

“Let you fade out?” he exploded. “Let you go? What do you take me for? A
—a Berthin? What’s more, suppose we get one point clear—I followed you, not
Betsy. And since I did, and I’m here, we’re going to tie in a few ragged ends
between us before I do let you go—if I have to. To begin with—why pretend
you don’t know what brought me?”

“I don’t, and I wish you hadn’t come.”

“Hand on heart, you don’t know, and you’d have me thrown out on the track if
you could? I don’t believe you. In your eyes I’m idle, wilful, a self-confessed
Lothario; the playboy type you’ve long since been cured of; I don’t add up
anywhere to the staunch worth you’re going to marry. But I’ve yet to meet the
woman who is entirely proof against adding scalps to her belt, and why do you
suppose I’m here, if not to offer mine for your collection, however, little
working use you may have for it?”

It was Caroline’s turn to stare. “You? A scalp—for me?” she faltered.

“If that’s all you want of me, yes. And I thought I’d been spelling it out for
long enough. Or is it a case of ‘There’s none so blind...’?”

“You know it isn’t! You and I have never been on those terms—never!” she
denied.

“Not even when I kissed you amongst the jasmine? If I didn’t tell you that
night and ask my own questions of you, then I’m losing my grip. And since
we’re talking in proverbs, what about all the ‘handsome is as handsome does’
goodwill with which I’ve been trying to impress you since? My sweet, sweet
Caro,” he shook his head at her despairingly, “what do you imagine all that has
been but my cap-in-hand, last ditch effort to—add up?”

The wild hope that it was true almost choked her. “Paul, this is absurd! We’ve
been good friends; I think we’ve liked each other. But this—just isn’t happening
—” she began.

He cut her short. “For me it began to happen the night you were a gatecrasher
in my sleeper, and it’s still happening now I’m one in yours.”

She shook her head. “That night you were only trying to make a pick-up.”

His eye gleamed. “Guilty, though even then with the strictest of honorable
intentions, which I’ve been expressing ever since.”

“But you haven’t! There’s been nothing—”

“Less than I’d have liked, I admit.. But look at the strength of the opposition.
First of all I was up against comparison with a lightweight named Roy; then, or
so I believed, I was fighting the sterling qualities of Cousin B.”

“I’ve told you—I never even thought of Berthin in that way, or he me.”

“Even so, it didn’t follow that you would think of me instead. So I made the
mistake of holding my fire instead of storming you as I should have done. After
all, I thought time was on my side; I wasn’t to know you were going to run out
on me like this.” He paused, then took the step or two which brought him close
enough to show her her own reflection in his eyes when he looked down at her.

“But I’m storming you now, Caro,” he said. “Do you realize that?”

She said shakily, “No. Yes But, Paul, how can you be? Ariane—”
 “Ariane, yes. My counter-attack.”

“Oh, no, Paul. She’s been more than that to you.”

“Add, then, a decorative enough playmate for a playboy before I met you, and
since I met Betsy, one of my chief means of self-defence against her. Besides, in
the matter of setting the pace of an affair there’s never been much to choose
between Betsy’s technique and Ariane’s, except that Ariane’s was smoother.
And you may remember I told you how the average sensible chap deals with
that?”

“You said he—plays along, just short of hurting the girl’s feelings.”

“As I tried to do with both of them—that, and no more. But then Ariane began
to step up the speed, and I saw the red light ahead. She was hoping to use me as
the lever to pry her free of a husband who was prepared to indulge her career-
girl excursion by setting her up in the Salon Ariane and subsidizing it, but who
refused to divorce her or provide her with evidence to divorce him. And now she
is closing the salon, and I shall leave her in no doubt that this last fling of hers
for me has failed, I think she’ll make the best of a bad job and go back to him.”

“Then—that letter? If you weren’t on those terms with her, how dared she—?”

“My sweet girl, if she didn’t stick at forgery, was she likely to baulk at the size
of the lie which she hoped would get rid of Betsy? It had to be convincing, and
as probably you both had scruples about reading more of other people’s personal
letters than necessary, it had to jump to the eye in the first sentence or two or not
at all. But no, categorically, I’ve never been on those terms with Ariane, nor
tempted to be. That’s the sworn truth, Caro. Is it too much to hope that it matters
to you either way?”

Owing him the truth, she said, “No, it’s not too much. It does matter to me—a
lot. Because you were right. It wasn’t only Betsy who needed to escape from
—from the other thing. I was only too ready to run breakneck from it too.”

At that his eyes travelled over her, measuring her, asking a thousand questions
before his tongue achieved a broken—“Because you ?—” And then—“You
mean you do love me? You can?”

Momentarily even less articulate than he, she nodded.

“Oh, Caro!” His hands came to her shoulders, holding her a little off from him.
“What have we been up to, you and I? Circling round each other, puss-in-the-
corner nonsense, blind man’s bluff, when we both should have been in the
middle, holding hands! And you’re here, and I’m—d’you know something?—
I’m too darned humble to tell you ... to tell you what you mean to me, what
loving you means. Imagine! For the first time in my life I can’t make love. Now I
haven’t got any right words for it; now, when I never needed them more. And
what am I going to do about that?”

She looked at him, her eyes soft, her lips curving to a smile. “You could try ...
kissing me,” she said, and surrendered to his waiting arms.

Those were the last words either spoke for some time. Then, side by side on a
seat which, as Paul said, had never been designed with a view to the wilder
orgies, they were talking again; saying ordinary things, knowing they had all
their lives before them for the sweet incoherencies of their love.

Paul described his headlong dash by car to St. Raphael.

“As you know, the note you sent up by Marie told me less than nothing. So as
soon as I’d read it, I rang Berthin—I’d just dropped him at the cottage on our
way back from Nice—and got all I needed from Ursule. If you didn’t want to be
followed, you should have covered your tracks better,” he accused.

“Well, naturally Ursule wanted to hear how and when we were going, and how
could we guess you’d want to follow us?”

“You should have known better—However, as there was no hope of cutting

you off at Cannes, though the ghost of a chance at St. Raphael, I got straight
back into the car and stepped on it. You were on the move out as I skimmed
through the booking hall and was hauled aboard, via the second class dining car,
without benefit of ticket and with half the station personnel yelling “Défendu!
Défendu!” behind me. But, forbidden or not, I’d made it, and if there’s a
Providence which looks after lovers, it certainly worked overtime for me when it
laid on friend Georges for this trip.”

“Georges? Oh—yes. But how do you know his name is Georges?”

“It doesn’t have to be. All sleeping-car attendants answer to Georges—Can

you do that again to order?”

“Do what?”

“Blush as you did at the mention of Georges. Anyway, he and I wasted no time
in coming to terms agreeable to both, and though no power of his could produce
a sleeper of my own, he was co-operation itself over telling me where I could
find yours.”

“You haven’t got a sleeper for the night?”

“Worse than that. There isn’t even a seat. My only hope is a second-class
couchette.”

“But there aren’t any. That’s why Betsy and I had to have first-class sleepers,”
Caroline told him.

“In that case, it looks as if I shall be sitting up in the second-class corridor all
night.”

“Then—?” She broke off, her eyes dancing with mischief.

He nodded. “Exactly, woman mine. We don’t even toast our reunion and our
future, or dine together this evening unless you’ll come slumming in the second-
class diner, or unless, from your position of vantage, you’re prepared to
‘arrange’ matters for me with Georges!”
 Her laughter bubbled. “I’ll consider it, if it isn’t too expensive, though it would
serve you right if I refused. But ‘all night,’ Paul? That means you’re going
through to Paris?”

“Unless you’ll stop off with me, say at Marseille, and come straight back with
me?”

“Back with you? But I can’t. I’m going to Paris with Betsy, and I suppose
she’ll want to stay there until Edward Brant can go on to London with us.”

“Then I’m staying in Paris too, and I’ll go on to London when you do. You
know, Caro, I’m ashamed that I know so little of your background, but I suppose
you’ve someone to whom I ought to mention that I want to marry you, and that
as soon as may be?”

A little sadly she shook her head. “Since my father died, I’ve no one closer to
me than Aunt Clio and Uncle Ralph Lane, Betsy’s mother and father,” she said.

“No one?” He drew her to him. “Never mind, petite orpheline, just as soon as
you say the word, you shall have ranks and ranks of Pascal forebears ranged
behind you. Meanwhile, do you have to go back to England just now?”

“I must. For one thing, Betsy will have nowhere to live until her people return
from America; for another, I promised Aunt Clio I’d come back with her, and
put her up at my digs until they do.”

“But after you’ve delivered her safely to them, you’ll come south again then?
If you’ve no ties to this Sidcup of yours, you aren’t going to insist that I marry
you from there, I hope?”

She turned within his hold and linked her fingers behind his head as she
teased, “What’s wrong with Sidcup? And think of the headlines we should make
in the ‘Sidcup Echo,’ alongside the story that you were suing Betsy and me for
our moonlight flitting!”
 He pulled a face at her, “For that crack alone, you’ll not be married in Sidcup.
I’ll wait for you in London as long as you say, but then we’re going back
together. You could stay with Ursule, couldn’t you?”

“If she and Berthin will have me, I’d love that.”

“They’ll have you. Berthin says he’s never known Ursule take to anyone as
she did to you. And where shall we be married? Cannes? Grasse? Nice? Villon?”

“Villon, please, Paul. It’s ‘your’ place, as no place in England has ever been
specially mine—” Caroline broke off as a turn of her wrist showed her her
watch. “Oh, Paul—Betsy! We were going to meet in the dining car. She’ll be
waiting for me!”

But when she made to rise Paul held her back. “Betsy can wait a little longer
or come and look for you. Meanwhile, there’s something I haven’t got straight
about all this. If, as you say, Betsy thought she already knew the size of Ariane’s
opposition, why was that phoney letter such a body-blow that she crumpled
under it as she did? Or don’t you know why she couldn’t take that, when she had
weathered all the rest of my deliberate dalliance with Ariane?”

Caroline hesitated. “I do know ... I think,” she said.

“Then, my sweet, you must tell me,” he urged. “Goodness knows, it’s going to
be difficult enough to meet the child, but if I’m to make my peace with her, I’ve
got to know where I stand, don’t you see?”

“Yes. Well, she said it was because she had blinded herself as to your real
relationship with Ariane, and the letter proved that it was only history being
repeated; that you were ... keeping Ariane in the same way as you—”

Paul’s face darkened. “I understand. You mean, as I’d been keeping Fanchon
Raguse? Betsy had heard that story, I daresay? You had too? And you were
running away from that, as much as from what you thought Ariane was to me?”
 “Paul, I wasn’t,” Caroline pleaded. “If no one else’s, Simone’s faith in you
over that should convince anyone there had been nothing wrong between you
and that poor girl. But Betsy—”

“But Betsy believed the worst?” He sighed and shrugged. “Well, I suppose I
asked for that. I certainly did at the time. But one thing, Caro my heart, you
must learn about me—when the truth is in me, I won’t be judged unheard or
unjustly, so try never to do it, will you?”

Her smile was very tender. She said obliquely, “I heard the story from other
people, but I listened to Simone!”

“Bless you. But you’ll take the truth of it from me now?”

“If you want me to, of course.”

“I do, though Simone was right—there’s nothing to it that can hurt you ... hurt
us, or ever could have done. This was all there was to it, my darling. I daresay
you’ll have heard that I’d known Fanchon since she was a kid; that she had been
a maid of my mother’s? You have? Well, on the night she was killed she came to
Mimosa to beg me—the only person she dared ask, she said—for a loan to help
her sister who had written to her in utter distress from Paris.”

“Oh, yes, Simone mentioned a sister. What was her name? Aricie? Hadn’t she
run away from home earlier?”

“Aricie, yes. She wasn’t cut to the same pattern as Fanchon and she went off
with a married man who later returned to his wife, leaving Aricie penniless and
in debt that he had incurred. She couldn’t, Fanchon said, leave the lodgings they
had had without paying the arrears of rent or having her own few things
impounded. So after months of silence she had suddenly appealed to Fanchon,
who came to me, and I gave her enough money to get Aricie out of the red and
to tide her over until she could get a job. That’s all, Caro. It was as simple as
that.”

“Except that Fanchon didn’t live to send Aricie the money?”

 “No, poor child. It was a filthy night, but she wouldn’t hear of my driving her
home. All she would accept was the loan of my raincoat, and the last thing she
said on earth was, ‘Please, no one, least of all my father, must know I came to
you for help for Aricie. So you’ll tell nobody, Monsieur Paul?’ And I never
have, until now.”

“It was that promise to her which you were keeping when you gave only the
barest facts at the inquest on her?”

“That, and the rest—that already the wagging tongues had tried me and found
me guilty, and it did something for my ego to keep them all guessing until the
next scandal broke.”

“And Aricie?”

“Well, by good chance Fanchon had given me her address. So when the police
solemnly handed my money back to me, I got in touch with her, went up to see
her, gave her the cash and told her she owed it to Fanchon, not to me, to pull
herself up by her bootstraps and make good.”

“And has she?”

“Yes. I look in on her whenever I’m in Paris'. I’ll take you to see her, if you
like. She got a job as a shop assistant; married a commercial traveller last New
Year and is about to produce an infant to whom, I suspect, I’m to be asked to be
godfather. You wouldn’t, I suppose, care to stand in as my proxy?”

“On the contrary, I can hardly wait to see you coping at the font!” Caroline
said, then laughed softly. “You know,” she told him, “Betsy was right, in a way
she didn’t mean. History has repeated itself after all. Because Simone told me
that when you were little, any money you had always burned your pockets until
you had given it to some one else, and since then there was Fanchon who had
only to ask, and just the other day you never questioned that if Witold Czinner
needed money, you would give it to him!”

Paul nodded ruefully. “I’m afraid you’ve got to face it, Caro. I’ve always seen
money as stuff that’s for spending or sharing, not for hoarding. But if you’re
worried about the housekeeping—”

“I’m not. And I wouldn’t have you different for the world,” she said, and knew
as she spoke how true, now and for ever, that was and would be.

Loving Paul, she had chosen no quiet, slow-pulse happiness, but a come-what-
would adventure. Now there would be tenderness to it; now shoulder-to-
shoulder unity; now fun; now conflict; now calm after storm. And Paul, being
Paul, would always give it edge, color, challenge. But it was a future she now
knew was the right one for her.

He was making play with her fingers, separating them, then partnering them in
twos. “Well, like it or not, we’ve got Betsy still looming, and if anything can
take the moonshine out of us for a time, that interview may, don’t you think?” he
said.

“I’m afraid so, but it has to be faced,” she agreed.

They stood up. But before Paul opened the door for her they went into each
other’s arms once more, giving kiss for kiss in punctuation to yet more of the
age-old ecstatic nothings which had to be said.

As they drew apart Caroline teased, “You’re still speaking English to me,
though you said you always used French for your romantic moments!”

“Ah, but this—” a butterfly touch of his lips saluted each of her eyebrows in
turn, the tip of her nose, her mouth—“this is no romantic moment. This is for
ever—time-for-love that’s going on and on. However, if it will placate any
bilingual gods—Je t’aime, my beloved. You’re the very beat of my heart,
m’amie—‘How’s that, with more to come on request?”

“It’ll do to be going on with—”

They kissed hungrily again. Then, hand-in-hand and sharing laughter, they
were on their way down the corridor together. As they went, the drumming of
the train wheels made music for their going, and no stranger who stood aside for
them was in doubt that it was a couple of lovers who had passed by.

THE END