Vernon in those two days decided that he did not wish to see Betty again. She was angry with him, and, though he never for an instant distrusted his power to dissipate the cloud, he felt that the lifting of it would leave him and her in that strong light wherein the frail flower of sentiment must wither and perish. Explications were fatal to the delicate mystery, the ethereal half-lights, that Vernon loved. Above all things he detested the trop dit.
Already a mood of much daylight was making him blink and shrink. He saw himself as he was--or nearly--and the spectacle did not please him. The thought of Lady St. Craye was the only one that seemed to make for any sort of complacency. The thought of Temple rankled oddly.
"He likes me, and he dislikes himself for liking me. Why does he like me? Why does anyone like me? I'm hanged if I know!"
This was the other side of his mood of most days, when the wonder seemed that everyone should not like him. Why shouldn't they? Ordinarily he was hanged if he knew that.
He had expected a note from Lady St. Craye to follow up his dinner with her. He knew how a woman rarely resists the temptation to write to the man in whom she is interested, even while his last words are still ringing in her ears. But no note came, and he concluded that Lady St. Craye was not interested. This reassured while it piqued.
The Hotel Bête is very near the Madeleine, and very near the heart of Paris--of gay Paris, that is,--yet it might have been a hundred miles from anywhere. You go along the Rue Boissy, and stopping at a gateway you turn into a dreary paved court, which is the Cité de la Retraite. Here the doors of the Hotel Bête open before you like the portals of a mausoleum. There is no greeting from the Patronne; your arrival gives rise to no pleasant welcoming bustle. The concierge receives you, and you see at once that her cheerful smile is assumed. No one could really be cheerful at the Hotel Bête.
Vernon felt as though he was entering a family vault of the highest respectability when he passed through its silent hall and enquired for Mr. James Vernon.
Monsieur Vernon was out. No, he had charged no one with a billet for monsieur. Monsieur Vernon would doubtless return for the déjeûner; it was certain that he would return for the diner. Would Monsieur wait?