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Lola.
    She eyed him anxiously. ‘What were you thinking about?’
    ‘I was thinking of Delarue,’ said Boris regretfully.
    Lola smiled sadly.
    ‘Couldn’t you think of me too sometimes?’
    ‘I don’t need to think of you, since you are there.’
    ‘Why are you always thinking of Delarue? Do you wish you were with him?’
    ‘I’m quite glad to be here.’
    ‘Do you mean that you’re glad to be here, or glad to be with me?’
    ‘It’s the same thing.’
    ‘It’s the same thing for you. Not for me. When I’m with you, I don’t care where I am. Besides. I’m never glad to be with you.’
    ‘Aren’t you?’ asked Boris with some surprise.
    ‘No, not glad. Don’t pretend to be stupid, you know just what I mean: I’ve seen you with Delarue, you’re all of a twitter when he’s there.’
    ‘That’s quite different’
    Lola set her lovely, ravaged face quite close to his: there was an imploring expression in her eyes.
    ‘Look at me, you little stiff, and tell me why you like him so much.’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t like him as much as all that. He’s a good chap. Lola, I hate talking to you about him, because you told me you couldn’t stand him.’
    Lola smiled with a rather embarrassed air.
    ‘Now you’re twisting. Bless the little creature, I didn’t tell you I couldn’t stand him. It was simply that I couldn’t understand what you found in him. I wish you would explain. I want to understand.’
    And Boris thought: ‘It isn’t true — she’d start yawning before I’d said three words.’
    ‘I find him sympathetic,’ said he sedately.
    ‘That’s what you always say. It isn’t precisely the word that I should choose. Tell me he’s intelligent, well-read, and I’ll agree: but not sympathetic. Look here, I’ll tell you what I think of him: sympathetic is a word I should use about somebody like Maurice, a straight sort of fellow — but Mathieu makes everyone uncomfortable because he isn’t fish nor flesh, you don’t know how to take him. Look at his hands, for instance.’
    ‘What’s the matter with his hands? I like them.’
    ‘They’re workmen’s hands. They’re always quivering a little, as though he’d just finished some heavy job of work.’
    ‘Well, why not?’
    ‘Yes, but the point is he’s not a workman. When I see his great paw gripping a glass of whisky, he looks like a man who means to enjoy life, and I don’t think the worse of him for that: but take care not to watch him drinking, with that odd mouth of his — why, it’s a parson’s mouth. I can’t explain it, I get the feeling he’s austere, and then if you look at his eyes, you can see he knows too much, he’s the sort of fellow who can’t enjoy anything in a simple way, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping with women: he has to think about everything, it’s like that voice of his, the cutting voice of a gentleman who is never wrong — I know it goes with the job of having to explain things to small boys. I had a teacher who talked like him, but I’m not at school any more, and I find it tiresome: I can understand a man being completely one thing or the other, a genial brute, or the intellectual type, a schoolmaster or a parson, but not both at the same time. I don’t know if there are women who like that sort of thing — I suppose there are, but I tell you frankly, I couldn’t bear a fellow like that to touch me, I shouldn’t like to feel those ruffianly hands on me while he soused me with his icy look.’
    Lola paused to get her breath. ‘She has got a down on him,’ thought Boris. But he remained unruffled. The people who liked him were not obliged to like each other, and Boris thought it quite natural that each of them should try to get across the others.
    ‘I understand you quite well,’ said Lola with a conciliatory air: ‘You don’t see him with the same eyes as mine, because he has been your master and you’re prejudiced: I can see that from all sorts of little tricks: for