IV
Four days passed. Then it seemed to me to be best to put an end to this.
The reconciliation with Rosy was therefore effected, and then there came a flow of gentle tears, soft embracements, and the rest of it; all of which I endured in an actively passive sort of way, as being to the female mind the necessary sequence of a 'quarrel.'
The days sped on again. I was for the present content. Once or twice, I thought to myself that I should, perhaps, have been more content if I had not been content; for indifference was, I held, to be avoided. But there was always this inevitably undecided position of Rosy's and my relations towards one another. One interesting particular I one day learned, as it were, parenthetically, from Rosy. Her departure from No. 3 on that memorable evening, with head bent down and hands holding one another in front, was not, as I had supposed, to the streets, but to the house of a Mrs. Vincent, who owed her money for some work she had done. It was some sign of my philosophy (or indifference) that, on realising that the whole of this luckless connection of ours rested on a mistake, I did no more than remark to myself that it was a pity, and, after thinking about it for a few moments, dismissed it from my mind. Nevertheless it came back to me later on, and my philosophy was more dubious.
One afternoon we were having tea together in the study, both of us reading or skimming the last batch of illustrated boulevard newspapers, when I, hearing a ring at the bell, looked up, and said:
'What's that, I wonder?'
She suggested that it might be some things which she had got at the Bon Marché Magasins in the morning, and proceeded to explain that she had transferred her custom from the Louvre to the Bon Marché for some reason or other which I did not remark. There came a knock at the door. She said, Entrez! and Amélie came in with a letter on the letter-tray and towards me, saying that it was a letter for monsieur.
