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enthusiasm, at least their punctuality reassured. Actually Martha’s best effort, directed to Mr. Joyce, was a laboriously-transcribed quatrain in French.
    La peinture à l’huile
    Est bien difficile ,
    Mais c’est beaucoup meilleure
    Que la peinture au beurre .
    Mr. Joyce, reading it, chuckled with pleasure. It was old-hat to him. It was one of the oldest rhymes current in Paris studios. He couldn’t know it was Sally who wrote it out for Martha to copy.
    â€œWhat did I tell you?” demanded Mr. Joyce in triumph—it was the one letter he did take round to the Gibsons.
    â€œOh, Mr. Joyce!” cried Dolores, greatly struck. “Do you suppose she made it up herself?”
    â€œNo, she didn’t make it up herself,” said Mr. Joyce. (Though it occurred to him that in the unlikely event of Martha’s taking to verse, it was just the sort of thing to expect from her.) “She didn’t make it up herself; but it shows she can understand a joke in French.”
    So far by this time had Dolores’ early fears subsided, even the notion of a French joke didn’t dismay her. Liberally, after the rhyme had been explained, she admitted the French to have some quite nice, clever jokes. The really outrageous joke Paris was to play upon Martha was of course yet to come.

Chapter Four
    To not a single gay party was Martha invited. Nor did she learn to frequent such cafes as Le Dôme or La Rotonde. All the red wine she ever consumed was consumed at table in the rue de Vaugirard.—Madame Dubois, unaware of an ally in Paddington, was as surprised as relieved that Martha didn’t demand Vichy-water; but Vichy or tap was all one to Martha. But though she always dined at home she didn’t always lunch at home. If the day promised fairly Madame provided half a long French loaf well stuffed with charcuterie for her to munch en plein air in the Tuileries Gardens.
    Following her instinct for routine, Martha regularly sought the same seat. (Adjacent to the trompe l’oeil statue of Tragedy and Comedy: the contemplation of which bizarre artifact relaxed her eye much as the reading of detective-stories relaxes the academic brain.) Naturally she was sometimes forced to share it; in fact amorous couples so appreciated her stolid incuriosity, they made bee-lines for its other end. But neither the bee-like murmur of their endearments, nor even the shriller note of a quarrel, disturbed Martha. She roused and glared only if anyone sat down on her portfolio—and not even the most besotted of lovers ever did so twice.
    But the Tuileries Gardens are in Paris; in the heart of Paris. On one of these fine autumn days Martha was neighboured by a solitary young man.
    2
    Even Dolores (even in Paris) could hardly have felt apprehension. Nothing more decorous was imaginable than his general aspect and behaviour. A neat suit and close hair-cut placed him securely within the resident Anglo-Saxon pale; he wasn’t even eating, like Martha, French food, but reading Galsworthy in Tauchnitz. Only as he turned the pages (and with no one sitting between them), it was inevitable that he should at last catch Martha’s eye.
    â€œNice day,” said the young man.
    Martha growled noncomittally.
    â€œI thought you were English,” said the young man. “I am too.”
    The addendum was so superfluous, Martha ignored it. As if taking her silence for virginal alarm, the young man instantly informed her that his name was Eric Taylor and that he worked in the Paris branch of the City of London Bank.
    â€œHaven’t I seen you here before?” he added hopefully.
    The classic approach was ill-judged. In Martha’s view either one had seen something (things including persons), or one hadn’t; any doubt on the point mere ocular flabbiness. Again, however, her silence was misunderstood: whether she wanted to or not she learned that her interlocutor lived with a widowed mother who had come