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of this same British quality or custom. And at the same time she secretly wanted him to break his silence, so that she could reassure him that if he had the slightest problem, the slightest worry, she was ready and willing to help him, if it was within her power to do so, in any way.

III
    The DAY FOLLOWING the departure of Natalie-for whom they had booked a sleeper on the Train Bleu-and two days before the departure of O and Sir Stephen, who were taking the train together back to Paris-but Sir Stephen had specified that it be such and such a date, and not the same day as Natalie’s departure, as he had specified in no uncertain terms that they return by train, and by that particular train, rather than by car-O finally managed to say to him, while they were finishing breakfast, which they had taken alone together, and as old Norah was bringing in the coffee, O, emboldened because when she had got up and passed close to where he was sitting he had, mechanically perhaps, the way one does to a dog or cat, caressed her buttocks, O finally managed to say to him, in a voice so low it was scarcely audible, that she was afraid she was a source of irritation, of displeasure, to him, but that she wanted to assure him that she would serve him in any way he wanted. He looked at her tenderly at first, then had her kneel down while he kissed her breasts; then, after she had got back up and was standing beside him, his expression changed.
    “I know,” he said. “The two men the other day…”
    “The Germans?” O broke in.
    “They aren’t German,” said Sir Stephen, “but that’s not the point. I just wanted to warn you that one of them will be travelling in the same train with us. We’ll have dinner together in the dining car. Please make a special effort to be pretty so that he’ll desire you, and follow you back to your compartment.”
    “But he knows very well,” O said, “that you’re the one who determines what I do & don’t do.”
    “Of course he does,” Sir Stephen went on. “We have adjoining compartments. He’ll come in through mine to yours.”
    “Whatever you say’ O said, and did not ask what the reason was-certain as she was that this time there was a reason-despondent at being unable to rid herself of the notion that, if Sir Stephen had prostituted her the other times for no reason, and as it were gratuitously, it was less in order to accustom her to the idea than to sow confusion and make her the instrument, the blind instrument, of something 1other than his own pleasure.

IV
    The Train Bleu was due to arrive in Paris about nine o’clock in the morning. At about eight, O, prey to a kind of indifference which she completely failed to understand but which created an armored seal around her heart, bad walked steadily on her high heels down the corridors that separated her compartment from the dining car, where she bad drunk the too-bitter coffee and eaten the eggs and bacon which constituted the breakfast fare. Sir Stephen had sat down across from her. The eggs were stale and tasteless: the smell of cigarettes~ the swaying movement of the train, all contributed to make O slightly nauseous. But when the pseudoGerman arrived to join them and sat down next to Sir Stephen, neither his open stare that fixed itself on O’s lips, nor the memory of the meekness with which she had caressed him during the previous night, disturbed her. Something, she didn’t quite know what, protected her, left her free to watch the woods and fields slip by beside her, to look for the names of the wayside stations. The trees and the fog concealed the houses set back any distance from the tracks; tall iron pylons, set in concrete bases, flashed by periodically, incongruous in the pastoral setting; one could scarcely make out the electric wires that passed from one to the other, every three hundred yards as far as the eye could see. At Ville-neuve-Saint-Georges Sir Stephen suggested to O that they return to their compartments. His