"She is going to tell me that I cannot come to her hotel. Why did I
send that telegram from Lyons?" Had it not been for that telegram I
could have gone straight to her hotel. It was just the telegram that
had brought her to the station, and she had come to tell me that it
was impossible for me to stay at her hotel.
After thirty hours of travel it mattered little which hotel I stayed
at, but to-morrow and the next day, the long week we were to spend
together passed before my eyes, the tedium of the afternoons, the
irritation and emptiness of Platonic evenings--"Heavens! what have I
let myself in for," I thought, and my mind went back over the long
journey and the prospect of returning _bredouille_, as the
sportsmen say. But to argue about details with a woman, to get angry,
is a thing that no one versed in the arts of love ever does. We are in
the hands of women always; it is they who decide, and our best plan is
to accept the different hotel without betraying disappointment, or as
little as possible. But we had not seen each other for so long that we
could not part at once. Doris said that I must come to her hotel and
eat some supper. No; I had dined on board the train, and all she could
persuade me to have was a cup of chocolate.
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