Free Aimez-vous Brahms by Françoise Sagan Page A

very disgusted to feign sleep, he thought hazily; and he, who was accustomed only to the second condition, watched over Paule's sleep as zealously as the vestals guarding their sacred fire. Thus they spent their night side by side, each protecting the other's counterfeit sleep, fondly and thoughtfully, not daring to move.
    Simon was happy. He felt more responsible for Paule, though she was fourteen years his senior, than for a sixteen-year-old virgin. While still marvelling at Paule's acquiescence and, for the first time, feeling that what had happened had been in the nature of a gift, he thought it indispensable that he should watch over her intently, as though to protect her in advance from the harm he might one day do her. He kept watch, he mounted guard against his own dastardliness, his clowning, his terrors, his sudden fits of boredom, his weakness. He would make her happy, he would be happy himself, and he told himself with amazement that he had never sworn such oaths even in the course of his greatest conquests.
    Thus when morning came there were several false awakenings, first one, then the other—but never the two together—going through the motions of a yawn, a contented stretching of limbs. When Simon turned over or propped himself up on one elbow, Paule would instinctively bury herself under the sheets, afraid of what his expression might be—that first expression after the act of love, more commonplace and decisive than any gesture. And when, her patience now exhausted, she in turn started moving about, Simon—equally on his guard, though his eyes were closed, and already afraid of losing the happiness he had found in the night—held his breath. Finally she caught him looking at her from under his lids by the pallid daylight filtering through the curtains, and she froze, facing him. She felt old and ugly; she stared fixedly at him so that he should see her clearly, so that at least there should be no early morning uncertainties between them. Simon, his eyes still not properly open, smiled, murmured her name and slid beside her. "Simon," she said, and she stiffened, still trying to pass the night off as a caprice. He laid his head on her heart and gently kissed her, at the bend of the arm, on the shoulder, on the cheek, hugging her to him. "I dreamed of you," he said. "I shall never dream of anyone but you." She closed her arms about him.
    Simon wanted to drive her to work, stipulating that he would drop her at the corner if she preferred. She replied, rather sadly, that she was not answerable to anyone, and there was a momentary silence between them. It was Simon who broke it.
    "Won't you be free before six? Can you have lunch with me?"
    "I haven't time," she said. "I shall have a sandwich in the shop."
    "What am I going to do until six?" he groaned.
    She looked at him. She was perturbed: could she tell him that there was no law which said they had to meet at six? On the other hand, the thought of his being there, outside the shop, impatient in his little car every evening brought her real happiness . . . Someone who waited for you every evening, someone who did not ring you up vaguely, at eight or after, when he felt like it. . . She smiled.
    "How do you know I haven't a dinner engagement this evening?"
    Simon, who was having difficulty with his cufflinks, stopped wrestling with them. After a moment he said: "True, I don't," in a neutral voice. He was thinking of Roger, of course! He thought only of Roger; he visualized him ready to reclaim his property; he was afraid. But she knew Roger was not thinking of her. The whole thing struck her as hateful. Let her at least be generous!
    "I've no engagement this evening," she said. "Come here and let me help you with those."
    She was sitting on the bed and he knelt in front of her, holding out his arms as if his sleeves had been fetters. He had a boy's wrists, smooth and slender. As she fastened the links, Paule suddenly had the feeling of having played this scene