Chapter NINE

The spring came early that year and very suddenly. So that one day the branches of the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens were bare and grim and the next they waved cool leaves in a kind wind. Or so it seemed. Then the chestnuts flowered and the girls walking along with linked arms began to discuss their new clothes endlessly. ‘_Ma robe verte ... mon costume gris...._’ And on the Boulevard St Michel bevies of young men of every nationality under the sun strolled along smiling at every woman they passed. The Latins were gay and insolent, the Northerns lustful, shamefaced and condescending, the Easterns shy, curious and contemptuous.

Nearly every week-end the Heidlers went down to a country cottage they had found near Brunoy on the way to Fontainebleau. Twice Marya went with them.

Left alone at the flat in the Avenue de l’Observatoire she would dine in the Rue St Jacques and go for solitary walks when the meal was over. But she vaguely disliked the Boulevard St Michel with its rows of glaring cafés, and always felt relieved when she turned into the Boulevard Montparnasse, softer, more dimly lit, more kindly. There she could plunge herself into her dream.

Fancy being shut up in a little dark dirty cell when the spring was coming. Perhaps one morning you’d smell it through the window and then surely your heart would nearly burst with the longing for liberty.

* * * * *

One evening, just outside the Café de la Rotonde, she met Miss De Solla. That lady had been ill, and seemed discontented with Montparnasse. She was going to Florence for some months, she said, and would not be back in Paris before June.

When Marya informed her that she was living with the Heidlers: ‘Yes,’ said Miss De Solla, with an uneasy expression, ‘as a matter of fact, I heard that you were.’

She added: ‘I must be getting along.’