A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

They came and got me late the following day. I hadn’t even tried to leave the room in the meantime. I didn’t want to run away. Running away is all right from a misdeed or even a crime, but not from a nightmare. The nightmare goes right with you as you run. I think I was almost glad when they knocked and I told them to come in. It was like being back among ordinary men again, it was like being back to normalcy again. The shadows went away.

At the trial the prosecutor’s attitude toward me was almost fatherly. I know that’s a strange word to use of such a person at such a place and such a time, but no other would be accurate. I was young, he said in his summing-up. It hadn’t been premeditated. And nobody in that room (meaning I suppose all the men his own age) would want a son of theirs to suddenly come face to face with such a harrowing, such a beastly, predicament as I had.

And though he didn’t come right out and say it in so many words, his inference was plain. I had taken a life, and therefore I had to be punished for it, I couldn’t be allowed to get off scot-free. But it wasn’t as though I had killed another man. Or even (God forbid) as if I had killed a woman. Or yet (banish the thought) killed a little child. All I had killed was a queer.

They let me out the other day. I’m forty now.

When Love Turns

She was tall, for a woman, but not to the point of being an oddity or towering over those around her. There was such a perfect proportion between her height and her girth that her moderate fullness kept her from seeming lanky, and her graceful tallness kept her from seeming stout. In short, she had the classic symmetry of an antique statue, so seldom found in the living bodies of real life.

Her hair was blonde, and was worn in tight little curls clinging closely to her head, as if someone had showered her with gilt wood-shavings and they had stuck to her there.

Her mouth was charming when she smiled, but smiles are always charming on a pretty face. When it was in repose, it hinted at the major defect she might possess. There was a stubborn cast to it, an overtone of thin but unyielding determination to have her own way. As if it were saying, “When things go my way, that’s all right. But don’t cross me, or you’ll have trouble.” It was a fair-weather mouth, good only for smiles.

She had about everything a woman would want: unlimited money, a magnificent home out near the Bois de Boulogne that was a show-place, lavish good looks; and if she was no longer in the full flush of youth, neither was she yet by any means within the gray overcast of its after-years.

She had everything but one thing. The one she loved no longer loved her.

The Daimler drove up and Boniface arrived home while she was supervising the final preparations for that evening’s festivities. She caught just a glimpse of him through several successive doorway-frames as he crossed the foyer and started up the stairs. He did not seem to see her, and she did not call out to attract his attention. It might be better if they did not meet until later, when she was dressed for the evening, she decided. She wanted him to receive the full impact of her completed appearance.

In any case, she reflected philosophically, cupping her palm underneath a bronze chrysanthemum as though she were weighing it, he did not come home to see me. He came home, yes, but not to see me. The two things are not quite the same.

Boniface was that absolute rarity, a mature man without a paunch. Whether this had to do with the gymnasium he attended or with his activity in sports, or was a judicious combination of both, the fact remained that his waist was as slim as a bullfighter’s after the sash has throttled it. Another unique thing about him, he was that almost nonexistent man who not only looks good in evening clothes but even looks better in them than in a business suit. Pictorially, they had a perfect marriage.

He was her Education, advisedly spelled with a capital. True, she had attended schools and seminaries as a child and young girl, but little she had learned there had remained with her. He had taught her the two main things a woman has to know: the art of living and the art of loving. And now the teacher seemed to feel his pupil had graduated. He was out seeking new classes.

And there you have the husband. The man who must have once loved Fabienne deeply, for he had married her.

He came into her dressing-room as she was just put-ing the finishing touches to her make-up. Richard, the hair dresser, had finished and gone. She was doing one eye, and had the other one left to do.

She turned around and smiled at him, and he smiled at her. They noticeably did not kiss.

“Too soon?” he asked sociably. “Shall I go down ahead of you?”

She crinkled her forehead at him in a sort of rueful appeal. “No, tonight’s my birthday. Wait for me and let’s go down together. I have only one eye left.”

They both laughed at the funny little expression.