The Honeyed Peace Read Free

with Evangeline, to get arrested and make Evangeline suffer and embarrass her friends? How dared a man like Renaud pose a question of conscience to anybody?
    I'm so late, she said to herself furiously, oh, curse this bloody car. And then the motor started, and she thought how lucky she was, in a world of feet and bicycles, to have petrol-driven transport.
     
    Lady Elizabeth Beech, looking from the rear like a woman who would turn and offer to sell you wilted violets from a basket, stood with her nose glued to the window of Van Cleef and Arpels, in the Place Vendôme. It was a clear sunny day, and Paris was too beautiful to see all at once, so she took it in careful doses. Now she was staring at a weird diamond-and-gold collar that would weigh heavily on some rich neck, and she was thinking that nothing made sense. For all the time Van Cleef and Arpels had been fabricating this unlikely necklace, she had been fabricating aeroplane carburettors, and though clearly she was the better citizen of the two, they had their necklace and she had nothing but grained hands and a sense of soul-destroying shabbiness. Also she was tired and felt herself to be muted, unappealing, and numb. Who would have enough money, what kind of person still had enough money, to buy those aquamarine earrings which looked like carved chunks of iceberg? Who would have the money, or the hope? Where did you go, wearing such things; what sort of people did you see; and who, in fact, were you?
    An arm was linked through hers and Anne Marsh said, 'Envious?'
    'Yes.'
    'So am I. Last year I was angry. But now I'm used to it. If it cheers you, I've seen that necklace on and off for a year; so no one can afford to buy it anyhow. That's something.'
    'Let's have a drink.'
    'The Ritz? For auld lang syne?'
    'No.'
    'Georges is back in the dear old bar. It makes me feel a hundred years old.'
    'Let's go anywhere,' Lady Elizabeth said and they started walking up the rue de la Paix towards the rue Daunou.
    They turned at Dunhill's and headed for the rue Royale. Elizabeth Beech had it vaguely in mind that Weber's would be a good place to go, and sit in the sun, and stare at strangers.
    'Everyone looks so loud,' Lady Elizabeth said. 'Not chic any more, just loud. Those revolting pompadours and those shoes for club feet and the short skirts and long coats. I hate the way they look. It's such a disappointment to me. I counted on being delighted.'
    'They claim they started it to repel the Germans, I imagine they're keeping it up to repel the British and Americans.'
    'It's very inconsiderate. If you haven't seen anything pretty for six years, it does seem mean of them to look as loathsome as possible.'
    'There's one good one,' Anne said. Across the street a tall slender woman, dressed in black, walked unhurriedly among the little hurried people. She was as conspicuous as if she had been dressed in flames. She moved better than the other women, because she knew how to walk and also because she was wearing low-heeled shoes, an improved version of Russian boots done in black suède. All they could see, since she was turned away from them, was the loose, full, but tightly belted black coat, and a hood of dark cloth banded in mink, and a huge square black bag swinging from her shoulder. She looked as if she had stepped out of her sleigh (which would be made of teakwood with pale blue satin cushions) to stroll around Paris, in case Paris happened to be a ballet set of Czarist Moscow.
    'Oh dear,' said Lady Elizabeth, 'what a pleasure. That's what I mean. Why can't they all look like that, so beautiful and pointless? It isn't much to ask.'
    The tall woman turned into a doorway.
    'Gone to buy herself a pair of underpants,' Anne said, 'made of pure crêpe-de-Chine and trimmed with Venetian lace, for five hundred dollars the pair.'
    'It still makes you angry, doesn't it?'
    'Yes.'
    'That's because you're American, and Americans are moral.'
    'Shall we just get across the street while the light