‘But I didn’t tell you how those damned in-laws of mine were treating her, did I? My stuck-up father-in-law, always too good for me, and his lady wife with her nose in the air and a patronising way of giving you two fingers, as if you might steal the rest of her hand if she parted with more. It’s not surprising that the child’s been unhappy with them, but I didn’t realise how unhappy until I went to see her a few days ago. It was not what she told me, for they had got her too cowed for her to say much, but I forced her nurse to tell me the truth. She told me Alice was bullied and punished, told continually that she was not wanted and that her father was a bad man.

‘I let them see how bad I was. I told them to go to the devil, and I took the child away with me. She is sick, and miserable, so I brought her to you, Marie. I’m finished with responsibility, I’m finished with England. I’m going off to paint, but I can’t lug an ailing brat around with me. Will you take her?’

Emilie had hardly listened to her mother’s reply, for she knew what it would be even before it came swiftly from her parted lips.

‘You know I will, John.’

Like Marie Riguad she had eyes and ears only for John Wytham. The great strength of him seemed to fill the room.

He was tall and handsome, and inexperienced though she was about men, Emilie knew that he was wild. There was something untamed, uncivilised about his very gaiety, about his sensual mouth, about the way his eyes seemed magnetically to hold the attention of anyone who watched him.

‘That is settled then,’ he said. ‘Here is some money. I will send you some more when I have it.’

He threw a bundle of banknotes on the table and it seemed to Emilie that there was an enormous amount of them. She was to learn that there were not to be many more.

‘You will stay, John? At least you will stay to supper?’ Marie Riguad gasped piteously as he turned towards the door.

‘No, my dear, I have other commitments. Thank you for taking Alice.’

He disengaged the clinging fingers of the child and gave her a kiss on the top of her head, then turned towards the woman he had loved when he was twenty, and who had loved him for over thirty years. He put his fingers under her chin and tilted hack her head. She looked up into his eyes, her face soft and transfigured.

‘So you still love me!’ he said after a moment. ‘Well, well, I was always a lucky man.’

He kissed her on the lips, then walked from the kitchen, and Marie made no further attempt to stop him. She only stood staring after him, her hand to her breasts which were pounding tumultuously beneath the cheap flannel of her blouse.