“You don’t have to; no.”

“You mean you do?”

“I mean I wouldn’t consider leaving Tunner here and going off in a car with those two. She’s an hysterical old hag, and the boy—he’s a real criminal degenerate if I ever saw one. He gives me the creeps.”

“Oh, come on!” scoffed Port. “You dare use the word hysterical. My God! I wish you could see yourself this minute.”

“You do exactly what you like,” said Kit, lying back. “I’ll go on the train with Tunner.”

Port’s eyes narrowed. “Well, by God, you can go on the train with him, then. And I hope there’s a wreck!” He went into his room and dressed.

Kit rapped on the door. “Entrez,” said Tunner with his American accent. “Well, well, this is a surprise! What’s up? To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

“Oh, nothing in particular,” she said, surveying him with a vague distaste which she hoped she managed to conceal. “You and I’ve got to go alone to Boussif on the train. Port has an invitation to drive there with some friends.” She tried to keep her voice wholly inexpressive.

He looked mystified. “What’s all this? Say it again slowly. Friends?”

“That’s right. Some English woman and her son. They’ve asked him.”

Little by little his face began to beam. This was not false now, she noted. He was just incredibly slow in reacting.

“Well, well!” he said again, grinning.

“What a dolt he is,” she thought, observing the utter lack of inhibition in his behavior. (The blatantly normal always infuriated her.) “His emotional maneuvers all take place out in the open. Not a tree or a rock to hide behind.”

Aloud she said: “The train leaves at six and gets there at some God-forsaken hour of the morning. But they say it’s always late, and that’s good, for once.”

“So we’ll just go together, the two of us.”

“Port’ll be there long before, so he can get rooms for us. I’ve got to go now and find a beauty parlor, God forbid.”

“What do you need of that?” protested Tunner. “Let well enough alone. You can’t improve on nature.”

She had no patience with gallantry; nevertheless she smiled at him as she went out. “Because I’m a coward,” she thought. She was quite conscious of a desire to pit Tunner’s magic against Port’s, since Port had put a curse on the trip. And as she smiled she said, as if to nobody: “I think we can avoid the wreck.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing, I’ll see you for lunch in the dining room at two.”

Tunner was the sort of person to whom it would occur only with difficulty that he might be being used. Because he was accustomed to imposing his will without meeting opposition, he had a highly developed and very male vanity which endeared him, strangely enough, to almost everyone. Doubtless the principal reason why he had been so eager to accompany Port and Kit on this trip was that with them as with no one else he felt a definite resistance to his unceasing attempts at moral domination, at which he was forced, when with them, to work much harder; thus unconsciously he was giving his personality the exercise it required. Kit and Port, on the other hand, both resented even the reduced degree to which they responded to his somewhat obvious charm, which was why neither one would admit to having encouraged him to come along with them. There was no small amount of shame involved where they were concerned, since both of them were conscious of all the acting and formula-following in his behavior, and yet to a certain degree both were willingly ensnared by it. Tunner himself was an essentially simple individual irresistibly attracted by whatever remained just beyond his intellectual grasp. Contenting himself with not quite being able to seize an idea was a habit he had acquired in adolescence, and it operated in him now with still greater force. If he could get on all sides of a thought, he concluded that it was an inferior one; there had to be an inaccessible part of it for his interest to be aroused. His attention, however, did not spur him to additional thought. On the contrary, it merely provided him with an emotional satisfaction vis-a-vis the idea, making it possible for him to relax and admire it at a distance. At the beginning of his friendship with Port and Kit he had been inclined to treat them with the careful deference he felt was due them, not as individuals, but as beings who dealt almost exclusively with ideas, sacred things. Their discouraging of this tactic had been so categorical that he had been obliged to adopt a new one, in using which he felt even less sure of himself. This consisted of gentle prods, ridicule so faint and unfocused that it always could be given a flattering turn if necessary, and the adoption of an attitude of amused, if slightly pained resignation, that made him feel like the father of a pair of impossibly spoiled prodigies.

Light-hearted now, he moved about the room whistling at the prospect of being alone with Kit; he had decided she needed him. He was not at all sure of being able to convince her that the need lay precisely in the field where he liked to think it did. Indeed, of all the women with whom he hoped some day to have intimate relations he considered Kit the most unlikely, the most difficult. He caught a glimpse of himself as he stood bent over a suitcase, and smiled inscrutably at his image; it was the same smile that Kit thought so false.

At one o’clock he went to Port’s room to find the door open and the luggage gone. Two maids were making the bed up with fresh linen. “Se ha marchao,” said one. At two he met Kit in the dining room; she was looking exceptionally well groomed and pretty.

He ordered champagne.

“At a thousand francs a bottle!” she remonstrated. “Port would have a fit!”

“Port isn’t here,” said Tunner.

IX

A few minutes before twelve Port stood outside the entrance of the hotel with all his luggage. Three Arab porters, acting under the direction of young Lyle, were piling bags into the back of the car. The slow moving clouds above were interspersed now with great holes of deep blue sky; when the sun came through its heat was unexpectedly powerful. In the direction of the mountains the sky was still black and frowning. Port was impatient; he hoped they would get off before Kit or Tunner happened by.

Precisely at twelve Mrs. Lyle was in the lobby complaining about her bill. The pitch of her voice rose and fell in sharp scallops of sound. Coming to the doorway she cried: “Eric, will you come in here and tell this man I did not have biscuits yesterday at tea? Immediately!”

“Tell him yourself,” said Eric absently. “Celle-la on va mettre ici en bas,” he went on to one of the Arabs, indicating a heavy pigskin case.

“You idiot!” She went back in; a moment later Port heard her squealing: “Non! Non! The seulement! Pas gateau!”

Eventually she appeared again, red in the face, her handbag swinging on her arm. Seeing Port she stood still and called: “Eric!” He looked up from the car, came over and presented Port to his mother.

“I’m very glad you can come with us. It’s an added protection. They say in the mountains here it’s better to carry a gun. Although I must say I’ve never seen an Arab I couldn’t handle. It’s the beastly French one really needs protection from. Filthy lot! Fancy their telling me what I had yesterday for tea. But the insolence! Eric, you coward! You let me do all the fighting at the desk. You probably ate the biscuits they were charging me for!”

“It’s all one, isn’t it?” Eric smiled.

“I should think you’d be ashamed to admit it. Mr. Moresby, look at that hulking boy. He’s never done a day’s work in his life. I have to pay all his bills.”

“Come on, Mother! Get in.” This was said despairingly

“What do you mean, get in?” Her voice went very high. “Fancy talking to me like that! You need a good slap in the face. That might help you.” She climbed into the front of the car. “I’ve never had such talk from anyone.”