To see them made his heart ice; he had continued to stand there, unable to move. He had watched McGuire leave Gini there, cross the street, and enter the apartment building next door. Just at the second when Pascal had decided to go down, go out, speak to Gini, McGuire had returned. They had walked away, and near the corner Gini had taken his arm. The gesture had been companionable; its easy working familiarity, as if they were not lovers but merely colleagues, cut Pascal to the heart. Here, too, he thought, he had been usurped. Now, turning away from the window, he told himself that it was fortunate he had not taken that plane, fortunate he had seen this, fortunate he had resisted that impulse to go down and speak to her. Gini was obviously continuing her work with McGuire despite a scene that morning that had left him scarcely able to function, to think. He loathed, and also despised, protracted endings. Yes, he had decided to remain in Paris, but everything that needed to be said had already been said—there was no going back.

He looked down at his sleeping child, his heart welling with love for her; he bent and kissed her forehead, then left the room. He returned to Helen’s opulent living room, where she was sitting quietly, reading a book.

“That took a while.” She looked up with a smile, saw his expression, and closed her book. Pascal picked up his overcoat.

“Yes. I read the whole story twice. Then we talked. I think she’s nervous about the dentist tomorrow.”

“Oh, she’ll be fine. It’s only a filling. You’re taking her. That makes it a treat.” Helen rose. Pascal wondered if she would ever lose this knack she had of making the positive negative, of making what might have been a compliment a reproach. Since Helen’s remarriage, their relationship had been easier, but even now she could never resist such sly digs.

“Have a drink.” She had moved to the sideboard. “Come on, Pascal. Ralph won’t be back for an hour at least. You can stand my company for ten minutes, surely? And you look as if you need one.”

“All right. A whiskey—neat. Thanks.”

He began to move around the room in an aimless way as Helen poured the drinks. Helen’s second husband, he thought, had been able to give her everything she had always wanted, all the material things he himself had failed to provide. Looking at the room, with its expensive furniture, wall-to-wall carpeting, predictable paintings, costly upholstery and curtains, it seemed to him both soulless and curiously bogus—like a stage set for some thirties drawing-room comedy. According to Helen, it had been redecorated at her behest, by one of the top interior designers in Paris. Her husband, Ralph, it seemed, had had simpler tastes, but Helen had converted him, of course.

Pascal sat down on a sofa covered in a Bennison floral chintz. He rested his arm on a riot of faded roses and accepted his drink. Helen pushed several little silver dishes toward him, little dishes containing pistachios, black olives. They were arranged on a huge glass coffee table on which rested a vase of lilies and several piles of coffee-table books. Picture books about houses and china and rugs and paintings and furniture—about things you could buy. Were the books consulted? Pascal wondered. He could scarcely believe they were read.