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eyes.
‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘I’m going to look at you a great
deal from now on.’
There was some scent on his hair, a faint aura of soap
from his white clothes. Her lips were tight, not smiling and
they both simply looked for a moment.
‘Do you like what you see?’ she murmured.
‘Parle français.’
‘Very well,’ and she asked again in French. ‘Do you like
what you see?’
He pulled her closer.
‘I like whatever I see about you.’ He hesitated. ‘I thought
I knew your face but it seems there are some things I didn’t
know about it. When did you begin to have white crook’s
eyes?’
She broke away, shocked and indignant, and cried in
English:
‘Is that why you wanted to talk French?’ Her voice quiet-
ed as the butler came with sherry. ‘So you could be offensive
more accurately?’
She parked her small seat violently on the cloth-of-silver
chair cushion.
‘I have no mirror here,’ she said, again in French, but de-
cisively, ‘but if my eyes have changed it’s because I’m well
again. And being well perhaps I’ve gone back to my true
self—I suppose my grandfather was a crook and I’m a crook
by heritage, so there we are. Does that satisfy your logical
mind?’
He scarcely seemed to know what she was talking

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