It wasn't as if she had been a cold and selfish woman like her sister. She wasn't cold; and, as for selfish, he had seen her with Agatha and the little girls. It was through the little girls that he had made love to her, that being the surest and shortest way. He had worked it through Ninon and Odette; he had carried them on his back by turns that very afternoon, in the heat of the sun, all the way, that terrible winding way, up the Californie Hill to the Observatory at the top, where they had sat drinking coffee and eating brioches, he and Vera and Ninon and Odette. What on earth did she suppose he did it for? But she hadn't supposed anything; she had simply understood, and had been adorable to him all afternoon. Not that she had said much (Vera didn't say things); but her eyes, her eyes had given her away; they had been as soft for him as they had been for Ninon and Odette. Why, oh why, hadn't he done it, then? He couldn't, because of those two infernal, bilingual little monkeys. They were clinging to her skirts all the way down the hill. They were all going to Nice the next day; and that evening the de Vignolles had gone down to the Casino and Vera hadn't gone. It would have been all right if the children had not been allowed to sit up to see the conjuror conjuring in the lounge. But they had sat up; and that had brought it to ten o'clock before he had Vera for a minute to himself. He may have chosen his moment badly (it wasn't easy to choose it well, living, as the de Vignolles did, in public), and perhaps, if they hadn't had that little difference of opinion, he and she---- It was in the evening that they had had it, between the conjuring tricks and the children's chatter, in the public, the intolerably public lounge, and it was only a difference of opinion, opinion concerning the beauty of the beautiful and hypothetical lady who was looking at him then, who had never ceased to look at him and Vera and the children when any of them were about.