n through
a screen of plane-tree leaves. And, conscious that it would be far
better to meet her casually in some open place than to risk a call, he
sat down on a bench whence he could watch the entrance. It was not quite
eleven o'clock, and improbable that she had yet gone out. Some pigeons
were strutting and preening their feathers in the pools of sunlight
between the shadows of the plane-trees. A workman in a blue blouse
passed, and threw them crumbs from the paper which contained his dinner.
A 'bonne' coiffed with ribbon shepherded two little girls with pig-tails
and frilled drawers. A cab meandered by, whose cocher wore a blue coat
and a black-glazed hat. To Soames a kind of affectation seemed to
cling about it all, a sort of picturesqueness which was out of date. A
theatrical people, the French! He lit one of his rare cigarettes, with
a sense of injury that Fate should be casting his life into outlandish
waters. He shouldn't wonder if Irene quite enjoyed this foreign life;
she had never been properly English--even to look at! And he began
considering which of those windows could be hers under the green
sunblinds. How could he word what he had come to say so that it might
pierce the defence of her proud obstinacy? He threw the fag-end of his
cigarette at a pigeon, with the thought: 'I can't stay here for ever
twiddling my thumbs. Better give it up and call on her in the late
afternoon.' But he still sat on, heard twelve strike, and then
half-past. 'I'll wait till one,' he thought, 'while I'm about it.' But
just then he started up, and shrinkingly sat down again. A woman
had come out in a cream-coloured frock, and was moving away under a
fawn-coloured parasol. Irene herself! He waited till she was too far
away to recognise him, then set out after her. She was strolling
as though she had no particular objective; moving, if he remembered
rightly, toward the Bois de Boulogne. For half an hour at least he kept
his distance on the far side of the way till she had passed into the
Bois itself. Was she going to meet someone after all? Some confounded
Frenchman--one of those 'Bel Ami' chaps, perhaps, who had nothing to do
but hang about women--for he had read that book with difficulty and a
sort of disgusted fascination. He followed doggedly along a shady alley,
losing sight of her now and then when the path curved. And it came back
to him how, long ago, one night in Hyde Park he had slid and sneaked
from tree to tree, from se