"
"It seems she had seen us once before. It was you she wanted, not
me. Why didn't you go, you duffer? I only came in a bad second!"
I laughed.
"She had read my things and likes them. Do you know, I think it is
rather a good thing I have met her, it will urge me to do more--
don't look at me 'in that tone of voice,' I am sure it will, really,
Victor!"
"Are you going to see her again, then?" I asked.
"Yes, oh yes!"
"When the husband next visits Tunis, I suppose?"
"Yes, and before that, even when he's here. She is going to
patronise my talent--see?"
"I see."
"I must write my next thing to her, of course. It's a nuisance being
hampered with this beastly French language!"
And then the conversation went on. We sat there and talked and
argued from the particular to the general, and back again, until the
waiters came and cleared the chairs off the pavement and began to
turn out the lights in the cafe--and it was a conversation after
which I slept badly.
After this incident I saw less of Howard, and our lives ran farther
and farther apart. I grew more and more absorbed in the developing
manuscript. He grew more and more taken up in the stream of
amusement he had entered. He wrote very little. A couple of lines
that had occurred to him perhaps at the theatre, and were jotted
hastily on the edge of a programme, was all that a whole week
produced.
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