When in the first week of December he decided to go to Paris, he was far from admitting that Irene’s presence was influencing him. He had not been there two days before he owned that the wish to see her had been more than half the reason. In England one did not admit what was natural. He had thought it might be well to speak to her about the letting of her flat and other matters, but in Paris he at once knew better. There was a glamour over the city. On the third day he wrote to her, and received an answer which procured him a pleasurable shiver of the nerves:
“MY DEAR JOLYON, “It will be a happiness for me to see you.
He took his way to her hotel on a bright day with a feeling such as he had often had going to visit an adored picture. No woman, so far as he remembered, had ever inspired in him this special sensuous and yet impersonal sensation. He was going to sit and feast his eyes, and come away knowing her no better, but ready to go and feast his eyes again to-morrow. Such was his feeling, when in the tarnished and ornate little lounge of a quiet hotel near the river she came to him preceded by a small page-boy who uttered the word, “_Madame_,” and vanished. Her face, her smile, the poise of her figure, were just as he had pictured, and the expression of her face said plainly: “A friend!”
“Well,” he said, “what news, poor exile?”
“I have let the flat for you, and like a good steward I bring you some money. How do you like Paris?”
While he put her through this catechism, it seemed to him that he had never seen lips so fine and sensitive, the lower lip curving just a little upwards, the upper touched at one corner by the least conceivable dimple. It was like discovering a woman in what had hitherto been a sort of soft and breathed-on statue, almost impersonally admired. She owned that to be alone in Paris was a little difficult; and yet, Paris was so full of its own life that it was often, she confessed, as innocuous as a desert. Besides, the English were not liked just now!
“That will hardly be your case,” said Jolyon; “you should appeal to the French.”
“Well, you must let _me_ take you about while I’m here. We’ll start to-morrow. Come and dine at my pet restaurant; and we’ll go to the Opéra-Comique.”