“DON’T SPEAK TO ME—wait,” Pascal said, pulling Gini into the elevator after him. They descended eight floors in silence, not touching, polite as strangers. Even so, the other passengers could sense their emotions, Gini knew; she caught their stares, their quickly averted glances. She stumbled blindly through the press of journalists already assembling in the lobby, and into the cold, damp air. She began speaking then, some incoherent plea, but Pascal would not listen. He grasped her arm and began pulling her across the street, then across the first bridge they came to, making for the Left Bank, beyond the wide, sluggish gray expanse of the Seine.
He looked almost concussed, Gini thought, her own vision blinded with tears. He seemed scarcely to see or to hear the traffic bearing down on them. Once on the Left Bank, he drew her along the quay, then into a tiny narrow street, the rue St. Julien le Pauvre. She realized then where he was taking her, where he must have spent the previous night; a small hotel in which they had stayed together twice the year before. She hung back with a low cry of pain, but his grip on her arm tightened. He led her inside the old building, up the narrow stairs, and into a room with an oblique view of the river and Notre Dame.
This was the same room they had been given on their two visits, prior to Bosnia, when they had come to Paris to see Marianne. They had made love in this bed, leaned together out of that window, back in the spring last year, that time when they had both been so joyful, when the world made such sense. Entering the room, she could feel their own ghosts. She turned away, covering her face.
Pascal slammed the door. “Now. You tell me…” He could scarcely speak. “How long has this been going on? Tell me—Gini, in God’s name—how long have you been lying to me? Since you left Bosnia? Before?”
“No. No—I promise you.” She swung around to him with a look of pleading. “Pascal—it was last night. Only last night. Never before.”
“You expect me to believe that?” He jerked away from her. “Your face. Your eyes. I can’t look at you. You’ve cut your hair. You smell of him—I don’t know you. Dear God—just keep away from me. I’d have sworn on my life you could not do this—not you.”
“Pascal—”
“Just don’t say anything. Wait. For God’s sake, don’t touch me. I could kill you. I could kill him. Just wait. I must think. I can’t breathe…”
He turned away from her, clenching his fists, and began to pace the room. With a low, muttered exclamation he swung the window open and leaned out toward the soft air and the soft rain. The curtains fluttered in the wind; a piece of paper on the table drifted to the floor. On it, in Pascal’s handwriting, were the names of ten large Paris hotels and their telephone numbers. The St. Vincent was the last on that list. Looking at his handwriting, Gini began to cry.
“Is this how you found me? I thought you must have spoken to Max.”
“Max? No.” He turned around and gave her a blind look. “I can’t—I’ve been traveling for two nights and a day. I haven’t slept. I went to Amsterdam. I was going to meet you in Amsterdam. I thought—I meant it to be a surprise. Then, when I found you’d left, I came here. I got in about two this morning. I realized it was the collections—I thought you must be at Lindsay’s hotel. When I found where you were—it was so late, your room wasn’t answering, I decided to wait until morning…” He could not go on. She saw pain and incomprehension darken his face; he turned, closed the window.
“None of that matters. It’s irrelevant. I—I can’t think. I can’t see. All I can see is that man, blocking the door. I knew he was lying. I could tell from his face. Then I saw your coat on a chair. But even then, even then—I was still thinking, no, it can’t be true, I must be wrong. Except I did know. I knew immediately. I knew this morning, almost as soon as he answered the telephone. Something in his voice—” He broke off; she watched him fight to regain control. “I’ll never forget it. Standing in a hotel corridor. Dying inside…”
“Pascal, please.” She made a quick impulsive move toward him. “I can’t bear to see you like this. Please. If you would just listen to me—let me try to explain…”
She halted; the expression on his face halted her; she let her outstretched hand fall.
“Explain?” He moved farther away. “I should have known—in this situation—anything one says, it’s going to sound like a cliché, as if we’re both trapped in a bad play. And yet I feel—I love you so much, Gini. And I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you—”
“Please—don’t.” He lifted his hand. “I don’t think I can bear it if you tell me that kind of lie. You’ve been in bed with someone else—How could you do that? Why would you do that? What in God’s name made you do that? I spoke to you Sunday night, at Max’s—that’s less than forty-eight hours ago. You said nothing then—you never gave me the least indication—”
“There was nothing to say then, Pascal. I wasn’t lying to you then. I wasn’t hiding anything.”
“Your letters…” He couldn’t hear her, she thought. Every interjection she made seemed to pass him by. He was reaching into his jacket pocket now, pulling out a bundle of letters. He tossed them away from him onto the bed.
“Everything you said—I know those letters by heart. You know how often I’ve read them, and reread them? You said—always was one of your words. I didn’t ask you to use that. You were free, and you chose. Gini—how could you do that? Why? I trusted you so completely. I thought—You think I could have gone off, anytime these last two months, and gone to bed with some other woman? I couldn’t have done that, I couldn’t have wanted to do that. The only woman I wanted was the woman I loved.”
Gini turned away from him with a low cry of despair. She looked unseeingly around this room, this very French room, with its blue toile-de-Jouy-covered walls; nymphs and shepherdesses disported themselves among romanticized ruins; small heraldic animals punctuated these pastoral scenes. The patterns blurred before her eyes and clamored in her mind. She couldn’t look at Pascal; she was afraid to look at a face she loved so much.
“It wasn’t planned,” she burst out. “Pascal—it may make no difference, but I want you to believe me. There was no lead-up to this, no flirtation. I wasn’t persuaded or seduced—it wasn’t like that at all. I can’t let you think that—it isn’t fair to Rowland. He didn’t foresee this any more than I did. I’ve only just met him, I scarcely know him. We’re working together, I told you that—and when I arrived last night—we were quarreling, and then—I can’t remember. I think he touched my arm. Or took my hand. And then—it just happened. I weakened. It was my fault. I don’t know why I did it. I’ve—missed you, and I’ve been unhappy, and lonely too. None of that is any excuse, I know that—”
She stopped. The expression on Pascal’s face had finally registered through her tears.
“You only just met him? When exactly did you meet him?”
“Pascal—does it matter? Please…”
“No. You answer me. When?”
“Last Friday.”
“Last Friday?” She saw his face blank with shock. “You mean you’ve known him less than three days?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” All the color ebbed from his face. “That’s how long it took him? Dear God. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe it of you.”
“Pascal—please…” He had begun to pace the room again. “I can’t let you think of it like that. It’s wrong. He didn’t maneuver me toward this—not once, not at all. We were simply working together. And then it happened…”
“No. You let it happen.” He swung back to her again, his face now tight with anger. “Let’s just be clear on that one point. You know as well as I do—in that situation, if it arises, there is always a moment when you choose, when you still have time to turn away. Before the kiss, before the certain sentence, before a certain glance is exchanged—you choose. So just spare me all the nice liberal lies, Gini, at least. Don’t tell me you can love one man and screw around at the same time with another. Spare me that. We both know it’s not true.”
“I don’t know that!” Her voice rose. “Pascal, it’s not always that simple. You can’t be so absolute.”
“Oh, but I can.” He met her eyes. “I am absolute. And so were you. Once.”
Gini believed what he said; this, too, had been her credo. She bent her head. She was terrified he would question her further so that she would have to admit the extent of her own disloyalty. She expected questions: how, when, where, why, how often: such crudities would, she knew, have leapt to her own lips had their situations been reversed. However much they intensified the pain, they were preferable to doubts.
So she waited for the questions, and when they did not come, began to understand that they had already been answered for Pascal by her gestures, expressions, and tone of voice. Or perhaps it was simply that Pascal was proud, refusing to ask questions that disgusted him.
To her surprise, he began trying to describe to her the circumstances of his journey here. At first she thought that this was because he could not bear to speak of anything more immediate. Then she realized: this description was a form of search—it was as if he were searching for her here, in the circumstances he described. That she understood: for it was against the yardstick of the events witnessed in Bosnia that they had both once measured love. He was asking her, obliquely, if she remembered that.
He had left Mostar in a U.N. convoy, he said, hitching a lift in the back of an army truck that was evacuating women and children and the seriously injured. The trip, over rough roads, had taken several hours. On those transports, generally, the children were beyond tears; sometimes their mothers, parted from husbands and families, not knowing if they would see them again, were similarly deadened; sometimes not. He had left Sarajevo, finally, at dawn the previous day, in the belly of a transport plane. That had taken him to a remote military air base in Germany. From there a series of connecting flights had been contrived; he had reached Amsterdam finally, a few hours after she left that city, around eleven the previous night.
He had had, he said, a film in his head: this film had sustained him throughout his trip. He would reach her room, walk into it: these were the words they might say to each other; these were the things they might then have done. This film, revised, had still been in his mind a few hours before, when, at six forty-five, he dialed her room at the St. Vincent for the fourth time in four hours—and Rowland McGuire picked up. Reaching this point in his account, he could not continue. She saw his face change, take on an expression she had often seen before, and which, in Bosnia, she had come to think of as his pre-firing-line look.
Pascal’s rivals, his ex-wife, and, indeed, even her father, had often accused him of having some adrenaline sickness, a death wish. Gini knew that to be untrue: Pascal always weighed very precisely the risks he took. It was true that he was less protective of his own safety than were most people, but he was not foolhardy. Before he made the decision to move forward into some danger, some firing line, there was that one brief, taut moment of assessment. This expression she saw on his face now, as he turned back to look at her for the first time since he began to speak. He was standing absolutely still, she saw, the light from the window slanting across the planes of his fierce, narrow, intelligent face. His gray eyes met hers steadily, and she knew he was weighing their past, what they had had—was perhaps weighing her against that morning’s events. She felt a lurch of fear then, for Pascal hated compromise, and she knew he was more than capable of walking out of this room now, of ending it quietly but firmly, and then never relenting, never coming back.
She gave a low cry, half anguish and half protest; his face changed. He crossed to her, and, touching her for the first time, took her hand in his.
“Listen to me. Look at me.” He turned her face to his. “Gini, we have to move beyond this. I can’t—at the moment I can’t see and I can’t think. Something must have been so terribly wrong. Darling—you’re so thin. Your hair. Your face—”
His voice became unsteady. He drew her toward him. “You’ve been hiding things from me—on the telephone, in your letters. I don’t mean that man—nothing to do with him. Gini, why did you do that? What’s happened to you since you left me? I thought we had no secrets from each other.”
He paused, his expression bewildered, his eyes searching her face. When she did not immediately reply, he clasped both her hands tight and forced her again to look at him.
“Right. This is what we do. We leave now—yes? We leave Paris together, by the first available flight. And then we go back to London, to our apartment, or some other quiet place, where we can be alone together and we can talk. We can retrieve this, but we have to do it at once. Now. Darling, look at me. Say you’ll do that.”
Gini hesitated; there was a silence, and that silence, he read. He released her hands and stepped back from her at once.
“You won’t do that?”
“Pascal—in a day or two, yes. I want that too—I want it more than anything else. But I can’t leave now, not today, it would be wrong of me to do that. I have to see this story through. I told you—a young girl is missing. I—I have to find her. I have to find the man she’s with. Two people have died as a result of him. I cannot walk away from this.”
There was a silence, a silence that terrified Gini. She could feel an ocean of words welling up inside her, some huge, deafening weight of emotion that had been too long dammed up. She could feel Pascal’s anger now; the tenderness and concern of a moment before had been wiped from his face.
“I see.” He gave her one long, cold, appraising look. “You cannot walk away from this story—or you cannot walk away from that man? Which is it, Gini? I’d like to be clear—very clear—about this.”
“It’s the story,” she replied quickly. “Nothing to do with Rowland McGuire. In fact, if I asked him, I’m sure he would leave, return to London—”
“You think so? I wouldn’t agree. I would say he’d be very reluctant to leave you. I very much doubt he’d return to London so obligingly. Judging from the way he looked and behaved this morning. Judging from the expression on his face.”
“Pascal—please. I’m sure you’re wrong. He’ll be regretting what’s happened. He’ll want to extricate himself.”
“Do you think I’m a complete fool?” He gave her a furious glance. “You think I don’t know what a man looks like in that situation? Don’t lie to me. You’d been making love all night—I knew that the instant he opened the door. I knew when he lied so gallantly on your behalf—and when you damn well let him do it. Christ…” Gini flinched at his violent gesture. “He is not going to walk away from this. He has no wish to extricate himself—quite the opposite. He made that crystal clear as I left that damn room.”
“Pascal, he did not. He said one word to you then…”
“One word was enough. What he said was irrelevant. I could see it in his face. If he’d hit me, he couldn’t have made it any clearer. And you damn well knew that. You know it now. You can’t meet my eyes. You’re either lying to me or lying to yourself. It wasn’t just some quick, meaningless fuck you both instantly regretted—was it? Was it?”
“I won’t answer that.”
“You already have.” He fought to regain control, turned away, then swung back. “So don’t try to foist the decision on him. It has to be your decision. Your choice.” He paused. “And think hard before you make it, because you won’t be revising it—tomorrow, or next week.” He gave her a look that cut her to the heart, in which anger mixed with the deepest regret. “We’ve been here before,” he went on in a tight voice. “Choose, Gini. Call it choosing between me and this story of yours if you like. There’s a plane in an hour, and I shall be on it. With you or without you. Goddammit!” His control finally snapped. He slammed his fist against the wall. “You think I’m going to plead with you now? You think I’m going to try to remind you of what we were, what we meant? I will not do that. I will not do that. If you love me, you’ll come with me. If you don’t, then this whole last year, most of my past, was a mistake. So choose, Gini, choose now. I won’t wait.”
“How can you say that? How can you do this? Did I ever give you that choice?” She swung around to him, her voice rising in sudden accusation. “You’ve been away nine weeks, Pascal. You said it would be three, at the most four. It’s nine. Did I do this to you? Did I say, if you love me, Pascal, you’ll get the next flight out of Sarajevo and come back? Did I ever say that?”
“You’re suggesting the situation is the same? Dear God, what’s the matter with you? Was I involved with a woman out there? No, I was not. I was faithful to you—I couldn’t have been anything else—and you damn well knew that. I left you in no doubt as to my feelings, not when I spoke to you, not when I wrote. I’m not asking you to choose between me and your work now. I’m asking you to choose which matters more to you—me, or the man who persuaded you into bed last night.”
“He did not do that—I told you. And he has nothing to do with this. I’m asking for a few days, that’s all—Pascal, I can’t explain. In Amsterdam—I swore to myself I’d do this.”
“You’ve sworn a lot of things.” He gestured at the letters he had tossed aside on the bed. “You want to remind yourself of some of the things you swore to me? You’ve obviously forgotten them. They can’t have been too deeply meant.”
“That isn’t true! Pascal—can’t you understand? I’m not trying to excuse what I did. But you must see—while you were away my life didn’t just stop. I was alone, week after week. I was changed by what I saw in Bosnia—and I couldn’t tell you about that. I couldn’t tell you how ill and desperate and mad I felt. I wanted you to be free, so you could work—and so I couldn’t even tell you how much I longed to have you back. Do you know how hard it was not saying that? Week after week. I was so sure you’d come back for Christmas. I was certain—I can make up films too, Pascal, did you ever think of that? I can imagine. I had this Christmas film in my head. I saw—oh, stupid things, perhaps, our first Christmas together. In our apartment. A tree. I bought a tree. And stars. I bought you presents and wrapped them up. And then you didn’t come.”
“Gini?” He moved toward her. “Darling—what are you saying? You told me none of this. At Christmas you said it didn’t matter. You said we’d have Christmas when I came back. You said—”
“I know what I said.” She could no longer control the tears that had begun to spill down her face. “But it wasn’t what I thought. What I felt. I hoped—I was so sure that you must understand. I thought—even Pascal can’t stay out there forever. He must miss me. He must want to come back. And then—it was when I saw Helen. I had lunch with Helen, and she said—”
He had begun to move closer, was reaching for her; at the mention of his ex-wife’s name, he stopped dead.
“What? You saw Helen? When? You never told me that.”
“Before Christmas. I could see she thought I was stupid. She knew you better than I did. She knew you wouldn’t come back for Christmas, or the New Year. She told me how it was when she was married to you. How she could never reach you. How she had to cope with Marianne all on her own—and I thought, yes, she’s right, Pascal is dedicated, that’s what he’s like, and it’s why I love him. Except—”
She stopped. Pascal’s eyes had darkened with anger. He caught hold of her arm.
“You finish this,” he said. “Go on. Except what?”
“Except it was destroying me, Pascal. Never knowing where you were, if you were safe. Not being able to tell you what I felt. It was tearing me apart now—and when she said that, when she said how it was, I thought—that’s how it would be if I had Pascal’s child. I’d be a second Helen. The baby would be a second Marianne. And you’d still be an absentee father, just the way she said.”
“Dear God, never say that to me.” He caught both arms in a painful grip and shook her hard. “Look at you…” He wrenched her face toward him. “I can see the marks of that man’s hands on your throat. I can smell him on you, and you talk to me about my wife and my child? You know what that marriage was like—you know what kind of hell it was. If it hadn’t been for my daughter…”
“Oh, I know you love Marianne…” Gini fought to break his grip. “Why are you here in Paris now, Pascal? Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me that you suddenly decided you had to see me. I know what finally brought you back—and it wasn’t me at all. You’re here because it’s Marianne’s birthday next week.”
He hit her then, so hard she fell to the floor. The blow knocked her against the base of the bed, and she crouched there, shielding her face. He had never hit her before, and the blow was so unexpected and so painful that her vision went black. Pascal caught hold of her and pulled her back to her feet.
“How can you say that? How?” He was shaking with rage. “Don’t you believe anything I’ve ever told you? That’s all it takes, is it, to undo all your trust in me—one conversation with my ex-wife? That’s your justification, is it, for getting into bed with a man you’ve known three days, and fucking him all night? Christ…”
He thrust her away from him. “Don’t answer that. You don’t need to. Don’t speak to me about Marianne. I love my daughter. And just now I don’t want to hear her name on your lips.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know. We both know.” He stopped, then drew in a breath to steady himself. “I’m sorry I hit you. I don’t want it to end this way. However, it has. I’d better go. If I stay—I could hit you again. I—” He looked around the room blindly. “There was a moment—in Bosnia—when I thought… Never mind that. Just don’t talk about Marianne in that way. You have no children. You can’t understand. All that joy and guilt and remorse. Trying so hard, feeling you’ve never done enough. I did have to work, you know.” He gave her a pained glance. “No doubt Helen left out that part of the equation. But I did have to support a child and wife. I take photographs. Of wars. You can’t do that nine to five and come home for dinner every night. She did know that when she married me. When Marianne was born, we did make plans. Where I should go, when I would return. How I could ration out my life. Meet my responsibilities as a father. According to Helen, the result was failure, and the failure was entirely mine, of course. I might have hoped—” He hesitated. “I might have hoped that you would see it differently. It doesn’t matter. You listened to my ex-wife and you judged me. Now I understand what happened last night. I’ll go. There’s no point in protracting this. It’s painful for both of us.”
“I wanted your baby.” Gini gave a cry; she made a small rushing movement toward him, then stopped. “Oh, Pascal—couldn’t you see? Couldn’t you guess? It began in Bosnia, in Mostar maybe. Because I loved you so much, and we saw so much death.” Her voice wavered and her face contracted. “I knew it was impractical. I could see you didn’t want it. But it just took hold of me, and I couldn’t get free. I wanted your baby so much, I couldn’t think of anything else.”
There was a silence. He had listened to this stumbling confession intently, with a pale, set face. As she came to its end, he gave a small gesture of the hands, an eloquent gesture, as if he were about to relinquish something he valued very much.
“I see.” His face became closed. “That was what you felt. Why couldn’t you bring yourself to tell me?”
“Why? Because I was too proud. Because I didn’t want to have to persuade you. Because that kind of decision has to be made by two people, not one—and it ought to be made joyfully. All that—”
Her voice broke. She began to speak again, and then gradually she realized that although she was pouring out to him her strongest feelings, emotions that had been dammed up for months, and although her confession seemed to move him, there was no relenting on his part, and no response.
She came to a faltering halt. He continued to look at her for a moment afterward, then gave a sigh.
“I wonder if you really mean that.” He glanced away, then back. “Perhaps you do. I can’t tell anymore. I wish you’d told me at the time. My reaction might have been different from the one you expected—who knows? As it is, perhaps it’s just as well. Presumably you changed your mind, did you, when you had that conversation with Helen, and you suddenly realized what a very unsuitable father I’d make?” The words were coolly said; the blood rushed into Gini’s face.
“No—I did not,” she said. “That wasn’t what I thought, not exactly. I told you. I wasn’t well. I couldn’t think clearly. I was afraid, terribly afraid. You have a child already. You might not have wanted a child with me.”
“I would certainly have resisted making a decision in Bosnia.” His voice remained cool. “A decision like that—it determines the next eighteen, twenty years of your life. It wouldn’t have been wise to rush into it then, in a war zone, when we were both under stress. You always told me how important your work was to you—in fact, you’ve been reminding me of that just now. So I would have suggested we wait until we had returned to London, had time to think—” He bent and picked up his camera case. “As it is, of course, it’s irrelevant now. Out of the question. You have all these requirements for the father of your children, and I don’t measure up to them. You’ve made that clear.”
“Pascal—please. I know what you’re going to say next. Don’t. I know you so well—if you say it, there’ll be no going back.”
“I know it’s hurtful. It still has to be said.” He gave her a long, steady, and regretful look, then moved toward the door. “I have a child, Gini. I know what that involves. If you have requirements for any future father of your children, doesn’t it occur to you that I have requirements also? I know what I would want in any future wife, in the mother of any children I might have. This time—” He hesitated. “This time I’d want to be sure that there was love on both sides. The kind of love that didn’t waver, that would endure. Responsibility, fidelity—all those things.” His voice became bitter. “Above all, like most men, I would want to be totally sure that any child my wife gave birth to was actually mine.” He paused. “You can be very self-absorbed, Gini. Even so, I imagine you can understand that.”
The final reproach was gently made; Gini had never felt such shame. With a low cry she held out her hand to him.
“Pascal, wait Whatever I did—I do love you. I still love you. I can’t bear to hear you say these terrible things. I wish none of this had happened. I’d give anything to put the clock back. But you could trust me. I’d never—you could come to trust me again. Please—we could move beyond this eventually, you said we could.”
“That was an hour ago. How strange.” He looked at her blindly, then glanced down at his watch. “Yes, an hour. It feels like a lifetime. In that hour you’ve told me how passionately you wanted my child, and I’ll never forget your face when you said that.” He paused. “But it didn’t prevent your going to bed with a virtual stranger, did it? You still let him cover up for you, and lie to my face—” His voice broke. “Is that love, Gini? It isn’t any love I recognize. I would have died rather than do that to you. I—look, it’s better if I just go. I can’t bear any more of this. You’ve changed, Gini.” He lifted her face up to his. “You used to be so—open. So direct. And now—you equivocate. You shift ground. You claim one truth, then deny it with your next breath. What did that to you? The war? My absence? A man you scarcely know? Tell me the truth.”
Gini looked for a long time at his face.
“All three,” she answered at last in a low voice.
She could see that the admission hurt him as much as it hurt her to make. His face contracted; then he turned away.
“That’s honest, at least. Thank you for that.” He moved to the door again, half opened it, then looked back.
“I could have kissed you then. I wanted to very much. Did you know that?”
“Yes. I did.”
“Better not to weaken in that particular way.” He shrugged. “If one’s going to do this, better to do it cleanly, don’t you think? I have to catch that plane. I’ll have moved my things out of the apartment by the time you get back. Gini, good-bye.”
And with that, just as she had expected, he left. The door closed quietly behind him. She heard his feet descend the staircase. Running first to the door, and then to the window, she saw him emerge from the entrance below. He crossed the narrow street, crossed the small park beyond at a fast pace. She watched his tall, determined figure as he receded into the distance. On the quay beyond the park he hailed a taxi and climbed into it. Indeed absolute; he never once looked back.
With tears blurring her vision, Gini ran to the bed. She picked up the letters she had written to him and pressed them tight against her chest. She felt cut to the heart by his words; it pained her deeply that he should have left these letters, these talismans. She stared at the walls of the room, with their remorseless patternings of ruins, of shepherds and nymphs. Shame and self-reproach and uncertainty washed through her mind. She thought: I could go after him—and then she felt it, welling inside her, a resistance, even a rebellion, that lay deep inside herself.
She was almost thirty years old. Her years of fertility were shortening month by month. That desire for a child—had Pascal understood, truly understood, when she spoke to him of that? He might; he might not. Oh, decide, she said to herself, beginning to pace the room, trying to force herself to think. And then it occurred to her as it had—if she were truthful—once during the previous night, that she might have conceived now, that even now, within her, infinitely small, were the beginnings of new life.
That possibility terrified her. Standing suddenly still, she realized that whatever decisions her mind came to, her body might already have made for her an irrevocable choice. Her fear deepened, and then, stealing along her veins, came a furtive exultation, an ill-advised joy; she tried to examine the idea of maternity—and maternity under these circumstances—she tried to see its implications, but they were too huge and her mind could not grapple with them. She watched herself take refuge in a certain fatalism, that woman’s defense.
Wait, she said to herself, wait—because no decision could be made until she was certain, and meanwhile neither Pascal nor Rowland need be involved; she felt, obscurely, that she had forfeited that right.
With that realization, that here essentially she was alone, some equilibrium returned. Clutching Pascal’s letters, she moved to the window and looked out at the Seine, at that slanting view of Notre Dame; from this partial viewpoint it resembled the bow of a great ship.
She thought of Anneke’s mother, and a promise made to herself. She ran out of the room, down the stairs, and into the street. Work, she thought, hastening back to the St. Vincent.
Room 810 was empty. Rowland McGuire, adhering to his schedule, had already left.