III

animated French conversation” and Sissie and Emile would forget her desperate onslaught in their admiration of the spectacle. The more she kept it glowing and emphatic and alive the further she was redeemed. She gave no glance their way. Dinner must be almost ready. Soon she would have to go. The gong would tell her. Till then she could remain immersed in the tide of words. The little man was earnest and enraged. He used his French easily and fluently. It was not wonderful to him suddenly to become French, to feel the things he expressed change, become clear neat patterns, lose some of their meaning, fall open to attack; the pain of the failure of words so set out, was made bearable by the wonder of the journey from speech to speech. He remained himself, apparently unaware of the change of environment, or indifferent to it.⁠ ⁠… En déche what did that mean? Vous devez me voir en déche. You ought to see me en déche . That seemed to be his summing up, the basis of his denial of a cosmopolis. She attended. The only way he declared, as if recalling an earlier assertion, of proving the indifference of everyone to everyone else is to be en déche. Smiling comprehensively just before he turned on his heel and swung round, she drifted out of the room amidst the clangour of the gong⁠ ⁠… en déche⁠ ⁠… déchéance?⁠ ⁠… somehow at a disadvantage. She thought her written phrases in French. They sounded a little grandiloquent. Someone seemed to be declaiming them from a platform. He probably had not realised what she was trying to say. But he was a cosmopolitan, and he denied that there was any cosmopolis, any sympathy between races, even between individuals. He was a pessimist. With all his charm and zest he believed in nothing and nobody. And he spoke from experience. Perhaps it was only in thoughts not in life that these things existed. People talked about cosmopolis because they wanted to believe it. Had he said that?