Lucia said: “You are wiser than you were . . . you could hold on, this
time, and he’d love you a while and then hate you . . . because you
would stand between him and his concept of himself as a decent person
. . . I repeat, that you are behaving well.”
I had cold creamed my face. Now I was putting rouge on. I said: “Well, I
doubt that it’ll be much satisfaction to me in the years when Noel has
Asia to console him . . . I don’t know though. I never tried it before
. . . but maybe the only satisfaction in anything, in the end, is the
consciousness of having behaved well.”
Lucia said, “The Victorians expressed that as ‘doing one’s duty as one
saw it.’”
I said: “Some of the duties we see would just make a Victorian
cock-eyed.” I arranged my lipstick, as if I felt the effect important.
“By the way, does Noel know how you’ve settled his destiny between you?”
“Hell, no. Beatrice plans to tell him over the week-end—but I shall
tell him, at dinner, tonight.”
Lucia put a little unnecessary powder on her lovely nose.
“Better spend the week-end with Sam and me, Pat.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I must go outside,” she said. “Noel’s wife will begin to suspect a
conference. I see why you are doing it, Patricia. Whatever minor hells
you and I have visited—that girl’s lived in a major one.”
“I know,” I said.
Lucia kissed me, for perhaps the second time since we had known each
other. “Is there anything I can do for you, child, before I go?” she
asked.
“Yes, stop at a drug store and telephone Noel. Tell him I’ll meet him at
Dante’s at ten for dinner, and that he is not to call for me. I’ll have
just time to dress, after I put her on her train.”
Lucia put her hand on the door, and then turned back to me. “Patricia, I
mean this seriously. . . . Most things have to come to an end. You know
that, by now, as well as I. My candid opinion is that you and Noel might
have come to a much worse end than this . . .”
I said: “Thank you, Lucia. I’ll see you for the week-end.” And I wiped
powder off my eyebrows.
Helena had been managing Beatrice dextrously. . . . It was an excited,
an almost happy, woman that I put on the train.
She chattered. She said: “That Helena girl says she’ll make me masks to
wear in sunlight, and rain, and electric light—and moonlight, even. She
is most kind . . . I haven’t been so interested in anything in
years. . . . And you don’t mind about Noel, do you? I mean, you’ll find
a successor to him . . . you are _so_ pretty. Did anyone ever tell you
you had a spiritual face?”
I thought: “It’s got spiritual by traversing a good many beds, first and
last. . . . No, Noel did that for it, if it _is_ spiritual.”
I said: “There are men for whom one finds substitutes, but not
successors. But don’t you worry about that. . . . You think of seeing
Fujiyama, you know, the always snow-capped mountain of Japan?”
She said, “I hope you see it one day, yourself.” I didn’t mind—I was
the first woman whom she had had a chance to patronize in ten years,
probably.