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He answered, sneeringly: “I was thinking of all these fools cuddling one another, and saying to myself that there is something else to do in life.”

She murmured: “Yes, but it is nice sometimes.”

“It is nice⁠—when one has nothing better to do.”

George’s thoughts were still hard at it, stripping life of its poesy in a kind of spiteful anger. “I should be very foolish to trouble myself, to deprive myself of anything whatever, to worry as I have done for some time past.” Forestier’s image crossed his mind without causing any irritation. It seemed to him that they had just been reconciled, that they had become friends again. He wanted to cry out: “Good evening, old fellow.”

Madeleine, to whom this silence was irksome, said: “Suppose we have an ice at Tortoni’s before we go in.”

He glanced at her sideways. Her fine profile was lit up by the bright light from the row of gas jets of a café. He thought, “She is pretty. Well, so much the better. Jack is as good as his master, my dear. But if ever they catch me worrying again about you, it will be hot at the North Pole.” Then he replied aloud: “Certainly, my dear,” and in order that she should not guess anything, he kissed her.

It seemed to the young wife that her husband’s lips were frozen. He smiled, however, with his wonted smile, as he gave her his hand to alight in front of the café.