Gentle laughter sounded all around as Jim concluded his speech. And when the laughter subsided, thoughtfulness and silence prevailed. Jim’s words had moved everyone, had touched them in surprising ways. Husk suddenly began to weep. She wept with her face upturned, and a smile on her face. She wept silently, the way lovers do when they feel too deeply the love that overwhelms them and when they can find no words to express it. Propr was more thoughtful than he had been in a long time; and his moustache rendered his thoughtfulness comic. Sam stared straight ahead, in an ascending straight line that led to the constellation of Orion. Riley, unused to such philosophising over dinner, having spent her most profound moments, it seemed, in nightclubs and on beaches, in fleeting gropes with perfect strangers in far distant lands, sat in a state of curious possession, as though listening to strains of music she had never heard before, or had heard before but which made no sense to her, but which were beginning to reveal some peculiar inner beauty that puzzled her.
Mistletoe had a smile on her lips, a radiant and enchanted smile that so delighted the invisible Paris. It was her smile of eternal happiness, of gratitude for having lived so close to the edge of personal disasters and miserable decisions and come through them and found art as companion and solace, and a great friend in Lao. For these reasons happiness came easily to her, and when it did she was like a little star, a tender sun, beaming with undisguised beneficence. It was a smile that irritated Lao often, for reasons he could never fathom. But when he caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eyes it enchanted him too and revealed to him more than he could bear of the beauty of her spirit, and the kindness of her soul. But Lao was not aware of it then. He had listened to Jim’s speech with a slight frown on his forehead, with a mildly sarcastic masking of his sympathy, and with grimly impassive eyes. He had eaten little, drunk much, and was determined not to speak. Jute, whose face was also of granite severity, when even at her most sympathetic, said:
‘Jim, what you said was very moving. I wish I could feel it too. Maybe I will, as the journey progresses.’