CHAPTER LIV
I
He had stood this gregarious flocking around just all he was going to, Neale decided that morning, up under the ilex trees, exchanging commonplaces with the two girls, unable to say or even to look what he felt, because Eugenia was there. And he'd had plenty of Eugenia during the last ten days.
What a nightmare those ten days had been to him! What a hideous block-head he had been to let Marise slip away from him, even for a time, before he had made a chance to see her, really to see her, in a quiet place where they could hear themselves think—with none of those third and fourth persons hanging around. What had he been thinking of, drifting along like a man in a dream, with no sense of time?
But that absence of hers had waked him up. Yes, it had waked him up! He had not had one consecutive night's sleep since she had been gone, starting up continually from a doze with his arms empty when he had dreamed she was lying in them. How had he ever lived through that suspense and uncertainty without losing his mind? He was very grateful to Eugenia for having kept him from making an awful fool of himself and getting into a blind mess of confusion. She had kept him in Rome by telling him that Marise would be back any day. If it hadn't been for that—where would he have been? Looking for a needle in a haystack all over Southern France, and Marise back in Rome.
Well, she was back and he had been too frightened not to have learned a little sense. He'd manage a walk with her alone, just the two of them before the day was out or—How could he?
How did you do anything? You just went and did it.
He went boldly to her room and knocked on the door. When Marise came to open it, he said, "To celebrate your
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