Cloudless May by Storm Jameson

had told and the other sworn to, all the thumbed greasy acts of a past far enough away now to seem like a guilty childhood.
    â€œI shan’t soon forget you in Brussels,” Mme Vayrac said. “You were so ill, sweat running off you with pain, my hands shook holding the brandy to give you when you came off. Anyone else would have given in. But you had spunk for a dozen.”
    â€œI don’t remember leaving,” Marguerite said. “I remember you lying on me in that ghastly room afterwards, to warm me.”
    â€œHelp me up,” Léonie said, “we’ll have lunch.”
    She stooped to lift out of its basket a poodle, still young, but too fat to enjoy walking, and took him with them into the dining-room. He had his chair at table and his plate of chicken. Mme Vayrac sent the servant away. She began to talk with a gentle amusement about two old gentlemen, a Senator, and a collector of church tapestries, who had been staying in the house: except that they could walk, they had the habits of the poodle. She laughed, shaking her breasts.
    â€œWhich of them will get your newest niece?”
    â€œNeither.” Frowning, Mme Vayrac sucked the edge of a sleeve she had trailed in a sauce-boat. “Help yourself, my love. Do you remember what you said after Freppel asked you to marry him? . . . ’Léonie, if I like I can eat lobster every day of my life now. . .’ He wasn’t a bad sort, Freppel.”
    â€œI wrote to him again last week,” Marguerite said abruptly, “asking him if he would change his mind and divorce me. After all, the war ...”
    â€œHe never will,” Léonie said quietly. “Men of his good sort are not generous.”
    Marguerite did not answer. She would never admit, not even to this woman who knew every blemish of her body and soul, the humiliation she felt at not being able to move her husband, that weak limited man. On the day she left him, he who had always been so anxious to please her, became severe and immovable. Neither tears nor sarcasm took on him, he was too eager to punish her—for the insult to his name, he said. As if a name shakes with jealousy and grief! For the first time her will had beaten on an object that deflected it, and she felt her failure as a flaw in herself, an aching joint. Even now, when she remembered it, she felt weak and old. Her fear of losing Bergeot sprang through her other fears—for her money, her health, looks.
    â€œD’you ever think of going back to him?” Léonie asked.
    â€œNever.”
    â€œWell, my dear girl, I wish I could help you.”
    She sank into Léonie’s love and faithfulness. Dear Léonie, who lied to everyone else, whose way of life, to put it civilly, was equivocal, but to one person, to her friend, was honesty itself, purity itself. A gentle happiness passed into her, coming from Léonie’s heavy body and easy maternal lips.
    Mme Vayrac was expecting a visitor: he arrived when they went back into the sitting-room. He came in holding his hat, shockingly new, in both hands, bowing over it. His eyes, lively and lifeless pieces of flesh, looked at both women with the same impersonal calculation. He kissed Léonie’s hand. Below the waist, his body filled out like a vase; he was nearly bald; long hair, starting from the crown of his head, was cut in a fringe above a white neck. He smiled with great sweetness, turning up his eyes slightly: this smile, intended to charm, was defensive.Léonie presented him: he bowed again, with exaggerated dignity.
    â€œSit down, Sadinsky. Now, tell me—you can speak quite frankly before the Countess—have you been able to settle the things we discussed?”
    â€œThank you, yes.” M. Sadinsky had a delightful voice, sympathetic and rounded. “I have all the documents I need, and they are in order. All.”
    â€œSadinsky came here from Roumania, from Bucharest, three months ago,”