Free Aimez-vous Brahms by Françoise Sagan

indifference, her loneliness. No doubt Paule had hoped to turn the interval to account in winning Roger back, or at least in seeing him and restoring their old relationship. But she had been up against an impatient child. Her efforts, so touching in their modesty—dinner served just as he liked it, plus his favourite dress, plus a conversation on his pet topic —all those devices which, in women's magazines, seem so many paltry baits, but which, in the hands of an intelligent woman, are terribly affecting, had been to no avail. And she had not felt humiliated at using them; she had not even been ashamed to substitute skilful lighting or a tender leg of lamb for the phrases burning on her lips: "Roger, you're making me miserable", "Roger, this can't go on". When she came to think about it, she had behaved in this way not from any inherited instinct as a housewife, nor even from bitter acceptance. No, she had acted, rather, from a kind of sadism towards 'them', towards what they had been together. As though one of them, he or she, should have leaped up and said: "That's enough." And she had awaited this reaction from herself almost as anxiously as from Roger. But in vain. Perhaps something had died.
    So, after ten days of wasted schemes and misplaced hopes, she could only be conquered by Simon. Simon saying: "I'm so happy, I love you," without the words sounding insipid; Simon stammering on the telephone; Simon bringing her something whole, or at least the whole half of something. She knew well enough that two were needed for this kind of thing; but she had grown tired, these last years, of always being the first and apparently the only one. "To love is nothing," Simon told her, speaking of himself, "one must also be loved." And this had struck her as strangely personal. Only, on the threshold of this new affair, she was astonished to feel—in place of the excitement, the glow which had ushered in her relationship with Roger, for instance—only a vast, tender weariness which affected even the way she walked. Everyone advised a change of air, and she thought sadly that all she was getting was a change of lovers: less bother, more Parisian, so common . . . And she shied away from her own face in the mirror, or covered it with cold cream. But when Simon rang the door-bell that evening and she saw his dark tie, his anxious eyes, the intense joy of his whole appearance, and his embarrassment too (like someone spoiled by life and striking lucky yet again), she wanted to share his happiness. The happiness she gave him: "Here is my body, my warmth and my tenderness; they are no good to me, but perhaps, in your hands, they will acquire a certain new savour for me." He spent the night in her arms.
    She imagined the tone in which people—her friends—would say: "Have you heard about Paule?" And more than fear of gossip, more than fear at the difference in their ages (which, as she very well knew, would be carefully emphasised), it was shame that gripped her. Shame at the thought of the gaiety with which people would spread the story, of the pep with which they would credit her, the appetite for life and young men, whereas she merely felt old and tired and in need of a little comforting. And it sickened her to think they were now in a position to treat her at once savagely and fawningly, as she had seen them treat others a hundred times over. They had called her "Poor Paule", because Roger was deceiving her, or spoken of her "mad independence"; when she had left a young, good-looking, boring husband they had condemned or pitied her. But they had never shown her the mixture of contempt and envy she was going to arouse this time.
     
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    C ONTRARY to Paule's belief, Simon did not sleep during their first night together. He restricted himself to holding her to him, his hand resting on a slight fold at her waist; he lay quite still, listening to her regular breathing and adapting his own to it. You have to be very much in love or