The ennui due to her critical disquisition on the shortcomings of Parisian costume cleared away from Gerald's face. "What do you suppose those people there are talking about?" he said with a jerk of the head towards a chattering group of three gorgeous lorettes and two middle-aged men at the next table but one. "What are they talking about?" "They're talking about the execution of the murderer Rivain that takes place at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. They're arranging to make up a party and go and see it." "Oh, what a horrid idea!" said Sophia. "Guillotine, you know!" said Gerald. "But can people see it?" "Yes, of course." "Well, I think it's horrible." "Yes, that's why people like to go and see it. Besides, the man isn't an ordinary sort of criminal at all. He's very young and good-looking, and well connected. And he killed the celebrated Claudine...." "Claudine?" "Claudine Jacquinot. Of course you wouldn't know. She was a tremendous--er--wrong 'un here in the forties. Made a lot of money, and retired to her native town." Sophia, in spite of her efforts to maintain the role of a woman who has nothing to learn, blushed. "Then she was older than he is." "Thirty-five years older, if a day." "What did he kill her for?" "She wouldn't give him enough money. She was his mistress--or rather one of 'em. He wanted money for a young lady friend, you see. He killed her and took all the jewels she was wearing. Whenever he went to see her she always wore all her best jewels--and you may bet a woman like that had a few. It seems she had been afraid for a long time that he meant to do for her." "Then why did she see him? And why did she wear her jewels?" "Because she liked being afraid, goose! Some women only enjoy themselves when they're terrified. Queer, isn't it?" Gerald insisted on meeting his wife's gaze as he finished these revelations. He pretended that such stories were the commonest things on earth, and that to be scandalized by them was infantile. Sophia, thrust suddenly into a strange civilization perfectly frank in its sensuality and its sensuousness, under the guidance of a young man to whom her half-formed intelligence was a most diverting toy--Sophia felt mysteriously uncomfortable, disturbed by sinister, flitting phantoms of ideas which she only dimly apprehended. Her eyes fell. Gerald laughed self-consciously. She would not eat any more pineapple.