# After Noon (Ertz)/Chapter 2

CHARLES LESTER ascended the steps of his house in Eaton Gardens, not far from Eaton Square, and opened the dark blue door with his latchkey. It was Saturday and two-thirty, and a most unpleasant March day. The gusty wind seemed to take pleasure in sweeping dust and bits of paper into corners and down area steps only to whisk them out the next moment and distribute them about the streets again.
He was glad to be indoors, out of the cold. He had lunched at his favourite chop house in the City, and now returned home, agreeably conscious of having about forty hours ahead of him in which to read, to sleep, and to probe, with a delight that never palled, the different and changing minds of his daughters, Caroline and Venetia, the gradual exfoliation of whose natures was to him a perpetual drama.
As he entered the narrow, white-painted hall he smelt the warm and homely smell of something cooking slowly in a pot—something that had been cunningly and thoughtfully put together. In that small house it seemed impossible to suppress these ​odours, but Charles had no objection to the smell of cooking when it was cooking of such excellent quality. After closing the front door he stood listening. He heard no voices, and when Caroline and Venetia were at home the house was agreeably vocal.
He went to the door that led to the basement and, opening it, he called down to Marie, the cook-general imported by him from Normandy: "Where are the young ladies?"
They were out, she told him in French, coming to the foot of the stairs, so that Charles looked down upon a great bust and a small black head on which the hair was tightly drawn back. They had not said they would be in to tea, but they had not said they would not be in to tea. She thought it possible they might be.
Charles never spoke French to Marie, and she never spoke English to him. Her English was reserved for tradesmen and callers, Charles's French for the translation of his favourite authors.
He took off his coat and hat and hung them in a cupboard concealed in the panelled wall. He then entered his own small library at the back of the house. There were only two rooms on each floor, and only three floors and a basement. The basement contained a kitchen, a scullery, and a pantry, and Marie's bedroom, which looked out, ​though somewhat below its level, on the garden. On the ground floor were the dining-room and Charles's library; on the floor above, the drawing-room and his bedroom; and on the top floor were the girls' rooms. The front windows looked on to a quiet street and a row of neat houses, all of which were of a pleasant age and appearance, being Georgian, and each of which had a certain individuality. The back rooms overlooked the small walled garden, in which grew a fig tree of no mean size, whose bare bones showed no signs whatever of being touched to life by the approach of spring.
He was not really sorry that the girls were out, because it meant that he could put in some uninterrupted work on his modern prose anthology before tea. He was amusing himself, and had been for years, by culling what he considered the finest passages from the writings of modern English, American and French authors. Whether this anthology would or would not eventually reach the public was to him a matter of little moment. The work delighted him and gave zest to his reading. There is in most of us a secret longing, of which we are ashamed, to read with a pencil in our hands. Charles could indulge this vice with an object. He annotated with enthusiasm.
The room was in some confusion, as he liked it. and in the middle of it, with scarcely enough ​room for a generously planned human being to pass between it and the wall, was a large old-fashioned writing-table, on which were piled a great number of books, and these books were already encroaching upon the clearing at which Charles sat, with pens, ink and paper before him.
The room was panelled like the hall, and its only ornaments were books, a few prints, and a pair of handsome Chelsea figures on the mantelpiece. The fire was already burning brightly in a grate set corner-wise in the wall, but he gave it a little attention before he sat down because he didn't want to think about it again for an hour or two.
Charles was not at all a handsome man, a fact which he spent no time in regretting. He had an alert, amused look, and it was easy to see that he had never, in spite of his forty-two years, taken himself too seriously. He had almost no vanity whatever, and considered himself an ugly fellow, but didn't care, because of his conviction that looks were of no importance in men, and of theoretical unimportance in women. He distrusted sentiment; he distrusted bombast, or any utterances of a high moral tone; he even, at times, distrusted beauty. He was of so generous and open a mind, however, that he was not sure he ought to be glad he distrusted these things. Except where cruelty or injustice were concerned, he was ​incapable of moral indignation. Here again he would admit, if attacked, that he might be wrong, but at any rate it was so. He was as he was; he did not pride himself on the fact. But in spite of his tolerance there was an odd streak of Puritanism in him, and there would have been more but for his sense of the ridiculous. One sign of his Puritanism was that almost the only prettiness that did not seem to him meretricious was the prettiness of his own daughters.
The prettiness of Venetia was very apparent when she came in at five. She was dressed in tweeds, and was one of those slim, soft, graceful girls that the young twentieth century seems to love to fashion. She was long-limbed and looked fragile, and yet her staying powers were tremendous. Thirty-six holes of golf did not tire her unduly, nor did late hours keep her in bed in the mornings. She liked wine with her dinner, and very often a cocktail before it, but not more than one. She drank and smoked in natural moderation. Her skin was exquisite, her eyes very clear and innocent-looking; and although her lips well knew the touch of the red pencil, they scarcely needed it. She was impulsive, affectionate, greedy for love, and very much aware of her charms, which she sought to increase by every means known to woman.
She came in rubbing her chilled fingers. She ​had had a glorious day, she said, playing golf, but the drive home in a small open car had nearly frozen her.
She leaned across the table and the piled-up books to kiss Charles.
"Where were you playing?" he asked. What he really wanted to know was with whom she had been playing, but he never asked direct questions. It was his policy to refrain from doing so.
"At Stoke, with Frank Stoddard. He always insists on giving me a stroke a hole, and of course I always beat him unless I'm terribly off my game. He's got mistaken ideas of chivalry. It was fun, though." She edged her narrow body between the end of the table and the wall and stood behind him, with her back to the fire. "Would you like me to go away?"
"Not a bit. I've done a good two hours' work."
"Thanks. It's nice and warm in here, and I'm chilled to the bone."
"Tell Marie to bring you up some tea. I've had mine."
"I'll wait and see if Caroline comes in." She took a cigarette out of a box at Charles's elbow and lit it. "Do you know where she is?"
Charles turned about in his chair so that he could see her. "I haven't a notion. I didn't know where you were."
​"Did you want to, particularly?"
"No. You're almost twenty-one, and marriageable. I only hope you've been making the most of your time."
She smiled. "You don't hope anything of the sort. You live in terror of our getting married. But I do think Caroline might tell me her plans."
"Oh, I don't know. Why should she?"
"Why? Because she's my twin sister. And because I tell her things."
"Well, there never were twins less alike," observed Charles.
"I know," Venetia agreed. "It's a pity. I mean it's a pity Caroline isn't more like me, not a pity I'm not more like Caroline."
Her father retorted, "You think Caroline's odd because she doesn't like young men to kiss her in taxis coming home from dances, and you do."
She seized his shoulders. "What a beast you are, father! After this I'll never tell you anything."
"But I think it's so right of you," he protested. "So natural and human. Caroline's indifference to young men alarms me."
"Besides," said Venetia, who was not at all indignant, because she loved discussing herself, particularly in relation to young men, "I don't let ​just anyone kiss me. If they're not terribly nice I growl and draw back, I assure you."
"If they're not terribly nice you oughtn't to be in a taxi with them at all. What other reasons have you for being glad you're not like Caroline?"
"I can't bear her friends. I think they're poisonous."
"That's because you don't agree with their politics. I do agree with their politics—or as much as I agree with any."
"Yes, exactly," she cried. "It's all right for you. You stand outside and look on at everything. You forget that Caroline doesn't. She plunges in up to her neck. And if you ask me I think she's out of her depth at this very minute."
Charles's hand strayed to his hair and began twisting a lock of it into a curl or spiral, so that it stood up, horn-like, and gave him a very odd and wild appearance.
"I wish you wouldn't hint at dark things," he protested. "I hope I've taught you both to swim. I've tried to."
"Oh, you think you've brought us up too marvellously," she burst out, with the absurd emphasis of her day and age.
He began to see that she was struggling with a grievance.
She had a complaint to lodge, and she was look​ing for a convenient place in which to lodge it. He knew that he would soon hear what it was, for it was not Venetia's habit to suppress her feelings for long.
He answered after a moment's thought: "I don't think I've done so badly, all things considered."
"Well, then, let me tell you," she cried, well under way now, "that I've either had to unlearn all the things you've taught me or else begin learning all the things you never taught me because you thought they were useless or out of date. But Caroline, on the contrary, has just swallowed everything whole, and the result is she's suffering from indigestion."
Charles, somewhat startled by this sudden assault, nevertheless answered with faint irony: "I understood that she was drowning a moment ago."
"It's both," said Venetia, not at all disconcerted. "Indigestion causes cramp, and cramp causes drowning."
"But this," said Charles, twirling his lock of hair, "is a damned serious charge you've brought against me. What I've taught you you've had to discard, and what I've taught Caroline has been bad for her. I'd like you to explain more fully."
There was a moment's silence before Venetia answered: "Well, just for instance, since you ​ask me, take the fact that you never had us baptised and never encouraged us to be confirmed. That you brought us up exactly like little heathens."
She hesitated.
"Well?" Charles prompted her.
"I told Frank Stoddard about it to-day, and he was simply horrified."
"Was he indeed? Then be baptised now. There's nothing to prevent it. Besides, what the devil has Frank Stoddard got to do with it?"
She pulled off her small felt hat and smoothed her hair with her hands. It was fine brown hair of a soft and silky quality, and was done in a small knot at the back of her head.
"He hasn't anything to do with it, naturally. I'm just telling you that he was horrified. I'm ashamed to tell people as a rule. It sounds so utterly pagan. And I've decided that I want to be both baptised and confirmed."
"Well, so you shall. Isn't it better to do it when the spirit moves you than to have it done to you before you can think for yourself?"
"I don't know. It's very unusual."
"But, good God, Venetia," he cried, "when did you ever know me to be influenced by what was usual, or what was unusual?"
"It's all very well," she retorted, "you can have original views for yourself, if you like, but ​I don't think you ought to thrust them on your children. I've been turning things over in my mind lately . . ."
"Which is just what I hoped you'd do," he interrupted.
"And I've decided that it was a great mistake not to have given us any religious teaching at all."
"I taught you everything that I thought you ought to know, and nothing that I didn't believe myself."
"Well, the Church wouldn't recognise it as religious teaching."
"That may be—I can't help that. I left you free to make your own choice in these matters. I respected your spiritual liberty. I considered that it was unfair to prejudice the mind of a child at its most impressionable age. I told you that there was most probably a God, but that I knew very little about His nature. I said He might possibly be a force, like electricity, but was most certainly a good force. I said this force had from time to time its interpreters. I said that people discovered this force, or this God, in different ways, and that you might find Him in the Bible, or in Science, or in a garden some morning about sunrise. I left the finding of Him to you. I don't see that I could honestly have said more than I did."
He added, as Venetia was silent:
​"As for morality, I tried to teach you that morals should be ruled or regulated by a love of virtue for its own sake, and not by fear. Most religions rule by fear. I don't approve of that, for people who are capable of thought."
"What I mean is . . ." she began, but Charles had not yet done.
"And as for Frank Stoddard . . ." He broke off. He had had a sudden flash of insight. "As for Frank Stoddard, I bet you what you like he's thinking of becoming a parson. Am I right?"
Venetia pulled at the bow of ribbon that trimmed her hat.
"Yes," she said, "he is. Why not?"
"Ah," said Charles, "I thought so. Do get another young man, Venetia. Frank needs counteracting."
She ignored this.
"I've been finding out lately," she said, "that Christianity means a tremendous lot to me. I used to take it for granted, just as I took the London Police Force for granted. The world seems such a tidy, well-ordered sort of place when you're very young. But now that I find it's threatened—Christianity, I mean—I realise I'd do anything to defend it. I believe I'd die for it."
"You and Caroline," said their father wonderingly, "think differently about everything. It's quite extraordinary."
​"I know. Caroline scoffs at religion. I think it's a pretty cheap thing to do—to scoff."
"You haven't a scoffing mind," said Charles. "I'm delighted that you want to be baptised and confirmed, my darling. I'll help you in any way that I can. But I wish it had been an inner voice urging you instead of that indifferent golfer."
He glanced up at her, his eyes twinkling, but he received no answering smile from her. He noticed how serene and white her forehead looked, and he thought as he admired her neat short nose and the curves of her mouth and chin:
"There'll always be a man at the back of all her enthusiasms."
But her eyes, when they met his, had the beginnings of tears in them.
He exclaimed: "Venetia, my darling, what is it?"
"Oh, I don't know . . . you make fun of things so. Frank Stoddard asked me to marry him to-day."
"I thought as much." He gave no sign of the stab of pain in his heart. "Well, would you like to?"
"I don't know. I don't believe I want to, really. I know I don't."
"Proposals are always upsetting, I notice," said Charles in order to give her time to tell him more. "Caroline's only had one that I know of, ​but, as you probably remember, she mooned about the house for days."
Venetia nodded and, turning her head aside, she furtively removed a tear from the corner of her eye with her handkerchief.
"Do you imagine you're in love with him?" Charles persisted. "Because I don't believe for one moment that you are."
She cried impatiently: "No, no, of course I'm not. But men are always so horribly attractive when they tell you they love you. More than they are at any other time. I said I thought I was just fond of him, but not the marrying sort of fond."
"I see. Did you kiss him?"
He asked this, she knew, less as a parent than as an amused and interested onlooker. It made it possible for her to talk to him.
"Oh, no," she answered. "As he's going into the Church I felt I must just settle things one way or the other, and no nonsense of that sort."
In spite of his anxiety he laughed inwardly at this.
"My darling, you'd hate being the wife of a parson. It's not your line at all."
"No," she agreed, "I don't think it is. But he does attract me very much in some ways. He's so wonderfully good, and so certain of everything."
"A robust young parson," mused Charles. ​"Mens sana and all that. My dear, how tired you'd get of it. Besides, he's been upsetting you. He oughtn't to care a damn whether you've been baptised or not. I've no use for young men who talk about their souls or yours. He's an ass."
"It's no good your saying he's an ass," said Venetia, "because he isn't. He's exceedingly intelligent."
"The term 'ass' is withdrawn," said Charles generously. "Now ask Marie to bring you some tea. I don't think Caroline's coming."
"In a minute." She drew a stool towards her with her foot, and sank down on it. "I feel horribly depressed now. When I was playing golf I was perfectly happy."
"You had a young man with you then," said her father.
She thought it better to ignore this.
"I really do feel depressed. Existence seems perfectly blank and pointless at the moment. I think life's a rotten business."
"Well," said Charles, "one of the things I always tried to hammer into your heads was that the illusion of illusions is man's pathetic and innate and groundless belief that he is born to be happy, and to have pleasure."
"Yes, I know. All the same, if one's depressed, one's depressed, and that's all there is to it. ​Everything seems futile. I feel in the depths. I think I'll go to bed."
"For heaven's sake," implored Charles, "have some tea, or even something stronger."
She shook her head.
"Well, you're making a mistake," he told her. "I think sometimes the whole difference between contentment and a desire to commit suicide is a glass of port."
"It would take more than tea or port," she began, but got no further, for the telephone bell cut in with shattering abruptness. She put out an arm and lifted it from the table.
"I think it's probably for me," she said. She held the receiver on her knee. Charles saw that there were undried tears still on her lashes.
"Hello. Hello. Yes . . . Yes, this is Venetia Lester speaking. Who is it? No, I don't know. I never do know voices. Oh, it's you, Clive. How are you? It's ages since I saw you. Yes, I know you have. Oh, nothing very special. Just the usual sort of thing. To-night? No, I'm not. Oh, that would be heavenly. Yes, I'd love to. All right. Oh, bother! It'll have to be that same old black dress I wore the last time. Never mind. Yes, at eight. What fun. Good-bye, Clive."
She hung up the receiver, a smile still on her lips, and placed the telephone on the table again. ​Her cheeks were bright. She was all animation now, and sparkle.
"That was Clive Cary. He's just back from Gibraltar. He wants me to dine and dance to-night at the Berkeley. I was longing for something to happen. That's my glass of port. I feel a different woman." She passed a hand over Charles's head in order to make that tortured lock lie down, and added: "Thank Heaven I'm young and not bad-looking."
"You hate yourself, don't you?" inquired Charles.
"No, not at the moment. Only I've got to shorten that dress. I think I'll go up and do it now."
She paused, on the edge of departure, her hat, coat and gloves in her hands.
"You won't have to dine alone. Caroline's sure to be in to dinner. I'll just tell Marie."
"Well, anyway," Charles said as she turned to go, "Cary won't talk to you about your soul. Souls don't trouble these young soldiers much."
She smiled at him gaily.
"I'd almost forgotten about my dear little soul myself," she said. Then he heard her calling down to Marie:
"There'll only be two for dinner, Marie. I'm going out. And I don't want any tea."
She went running up the stairs, her depression ​forgotten. Charles sat smiling to himself. He needn't have been anxious about Frank Stoddard. He needn't be anxious about any of them. The charming absurdity of his daughter amused and delighted him. Her absurdity was all the more pleasing because she knew she was being absurd. Her sense of humour in this respect was to be relied upon. She was continually amused at herself. At the same time, her moods, while they lasted, were real enough. He knew he would hear more of her religious uncertainties. She was suffering from doubts—doubts as to whether agnosticism suited her or not. He considered that doubts meant growth, and growth must have its painful, its disturbing moments. His education of them might be as faulty as she had just said, but at any rate he had encouraged them to think for themselves.
He returned to his task, that task that ran parallel to his daily work as a little river runs beside a railway. He was a chartered accountant in the City, and he found that pleasant river a necessity. He had tried in those early days, when he first returned to London, to get back his old job as proof reader—that job that Brenda had laughed at—but it was fortunate for him that his place was filled, for Mr. Rupert Hinkson, of Hinkson and Lang, publishers, remembering a time when Charles had temporarily acted as clerk ​in the firm's accountancy department, and acquitted himself notably well, sent him to his brother, Mr. Leopold Hinkson, of Hinkson and Rogers, chartered accountants, to whom, after passing his examinations, he presently became articled.
At the end of four years he became managing clerk. At the end of seven years he was made junior partner. The firm was now Hinkson and Lester, and Mr. Hinkson, who was ageing fast, left the greater part of the business to Charles.
To nearly everyone there is some art or science which seems clear and simple, and is a reward and a consolation in itself. To Charles figures were always amenable and friendly. He was happy and on good terms with them. Accountancy problems were as interesting to him as any other problems. They suited his impartial mind. On the other hand, he had a morbid dread of becoming dry and professional. It was a business that gave individuality little play, and he had a horror of conforming to any pattern.
"If all chartered accountants were photographed, and the photographs superimposed on one another," Charles once said, "I would do violence to myself if the result resembled me."
But his anthology and the amusing activities of his daughters kept his mind fresh. It sometimes amazed him to realise how contented he ​was. There was nothing he really wanted, he often told himself, except possibly a car, and a week-end cottage in the country.
He never ceased to be thankful that the restless, tigerish, implacable Brenda had left him. Sometimes when he was speaking at a shareholders' meeting, or explaining to some tyro the intricacies of accounts, the thought would flash through his mind: "Suppose I'd given in and stayed? Suppose we'd still been together? Good God!"
He had come to believe that he didn't like women very much, and although he was attracted to them at times, he persuaded himself that they were, with very few exceptions, unscrupulous. He took care that none should gain an ascendency over him. He wanted his life to continue to be very orderly, without complications. He had begun it so feverishly that he had since fallen in love with sanity and peace, and he was convinced that they were the only things worth having.
As for happiness, that elusive something that slipped through one's fingers like a little silver fish, he got it sometimes from a line of poetry, or from the sound of the girls' voices, or from the rose-coloured look of the winter sun through the bare, bluish trees of the park; at times, even from ledgers. . . .
He was looking through the three volumes of ​Amiel's Diary for some passages he had marked when the telephone bell rang again.
It was probably Clive Cary, he thought, ringing up to say he would be five minutes late or five minutes early. It was the fatuous sort of thing Venetia's young men sometimes did. But the voice that answered his was a woman's voice, and one that he had never heard before.
There were few women with whom he had ever been on telephoning terms, and there now remained only two—Mrs. Mallison and Miss Brewer, the artist. There had been in the past various ladies who were in the habit of ringing up to ask him to dine, or to ask why he hadn't been to see them, and if they had unwittingly offended him in any way; or possibly to ask if Venetia or Caroline would come to lunch with their daughters. But few of these ladies had been able to endure the rigours of his anti-social nature, and none had, what the lady who now addressed him had, an American accent.
She wished to speak to him, Mr. Charles Lester. She seemed surprised that he had never heard of her.
"Won't you repeat your name?" asked Charles, at a loss. "I don't think I can have heard it correctly."
"Chalmers. Lydia Chalmers. Mrs. Chalmers. Didn't Mr. Hinkson write you about me?"
​"No. He didn't. Which Mr. Hinkson?"
He felt he was being incredibly stupid.
"Oh," the voice was faintly impatient, "Mr. Rupert Hinkson, the publisher. He's just been in America, and I've been seeing a lot of him. When he heard I was coming to England he said I must meet you. He said he would write, and made me promise to ring you up."
"I've never heard a word from him since he left England," said Charles. "But I expect the letter is on the way. Can't I . . . ?"
"But how very queer," he heard her say. "He told me he was writing weeks ago. I wouldn't have dreamt of ringing up otherwise. I'm so sorry. I feel I've . . ."
"But I'm delighted," cried Charles, with affected heartiness, for it seemed to him that this Mrs. Chalmers was feeling rebuffed, and ill at ease. "You can give me news of Mr. Hinkson, perhaps. How is he?"
Thus encouraged, she said he was very well and had been enjoying his stay in America. He was sailing for England soon, she thought. He had said such nice things about Mr. Lester and his daughters . . . it was really most annoying about that letter.
"Never mind the letter," said Charles. "I think it's exceedingly kind of you to ring me up. ​Bother the letter! Tell me, are you over here alone? And how long are you staying?"
"Yes, I'm alone," she answered. "I don't know how long I shall stay. It depends, of course . . . I've been in England once before, quite a long time ago."
"Where are you?" he asked.
"I'm at the Berkeley. After you've had the letter and seen what Mr. Hinkson has to say about me, perhaps you'll call and see me one day."
"Confound these rich women!" Charles was thinking. He said aloud: "But can't I come before that?" Mr. Hinkson had been a good friend to him. He owed him much. "Couldn't I come in this evening, after dinner?"
"Oh, that would be delightful," she answered.
"Very well," said Charles. "About nine, or half-past, if that would suit you."
"Perhaps old Rupert is in love with her," he thought, "and wants me to look her over. These elderly widowers are always cautious."
Mrs. Chalmers said that would suit her perfectly, and Charles said, "Good-bye" firmly, for he had a horror of the dragging and ragged ends of telephone conversations, and hung up the receiver.
"This is perfectly astounding," he said to himself.
Rupert Hinkson's long, equine face rose up be​fore him, and at the same time he saw the purplish face and portly figure of Mrs. Rupert, dead seven years now. Rupert had been inconsolable, and so far unconsoled. That he should now, at sixty-four, begin to interest himself in a rich and probably pretty widow—he visualised her as such—struck Charles as highly amusing.
But why, he asked himself, was he thinking of her as a widow? She might—it was frequently done—have left her husband behind in America. Or she might, of course, be a divorcée.
Lydia Chalmers. No, he saw mourning round her, as the fortune-tellers say.
"I pictured a pretty woman in black. If I'm right I've had a moment of clairvoyance."
It was a promising name, Lydia Chalmers. The Lydia reminded him of a heroine in one of Mr. Henry James's novels. Charles, who knew few American women, was apt to see them through the eyes of Mr. Henry James, who was a favourite author of his. A great many passages by that writer were finding their way into his anthology. Mrs. Chalmers was probably pretty, rich, intelligent, and cold. Rich, undoubtedly. The Berkeley Hotel was not for the average tourist.
Well, it was a surprising world. Six minutes ago he would have sworn that he would be spending the evening translating portions of Amiel's ​Diary, and trying to find out from Caroline, without directly questioning her, what she had been up to, and who those friends were whom Venetia considered poisonous. Instead of that, he was going to spend the evening with an unknown woman . . .
The telephone bell rang again. This time it was Caroline.
"Is that you, father? Yes, it's Caroline. I'm staying to supper with the Robinsons, and I may go to a meeting afterwards. But I'll be home fairly early—about eleven, I should think. Good-bye."
So she was staying to supper with the Robinsons! He had heard a good deal of them. The Robinsons didn't dine. They were too intellectual to dine. They supped. And a meeting afterwards. A gathering, he judged, of Earnest People, who wished to remake the world after a formula of their own by Parliamentary or un-Parliamentary means. It was the sort of thing Caroline liked. Well, he had liked it himself not so very long ago, until he had realised that he liked laughing at Earnest People better than agreeing with them, and that the changing values of most things had a way of making that sort of Earnestness rather ridiculous.
And while Caroline would be thus engaged, Venetia would be dining and dancing at the ​Berkeley with a young Captain in the Rifle Brigade.
"And I shall be dining alone, after all, poor devil," he said to himself. He didn't mind, but it was a foretaste of a future, remote, of course, please God, of which he did not permit himself to think.
He looked at his watch. It was after seven. He shut up Amiel and went upstairs to dress.