Chapter 40 Section thirty-ninth

He could still feel her hand lightly touching his cheek, more precisely the light touch of three fingertips, like a feeling after being touched by a frog.Her caresses were always slow, calm, and seemed to him to be stalling for time.However, the brief pause of fingers on his cheek was not like a caress, but like a reminder.Like a woman swept away by a storm, swept away by the waves, words can only be replaced by a fleeting gesture: "My heart is still here! I'm gone! Whatever happens, don't forget me!" He dressed mechanically and began to recall what they had said about London. "Why go to London?" he asked."You understand very well why I'm going to London," she replied, an obvious allusion to his last letter of departure.The phrase "you understand very well" means: you know the letter.But that letter, the letter she had just taken out of the mailbox downstairs, could only be known by the sender and herself.In other words, Chantal has ripped off poor Kairano's mask.She was saying to him: It was you, you yourself who invited me to London, so I obeyed your arrangement.

But if she had already guessed (God, God, how did she guess?): he was the one who wrote her.Then why is she still so angry?Why is she so cruel?If she had already guessed everything, why didn't she guess why he used this ruse?Why should she still doubt him?After all these questions, only one thing was certain: he didn't know her.Or else, she still didn't understand it all.Their thoughts went in different directions, and it seemed to him that they would never meet again. He felt a kind of incurable pain, and that pain had a tendency to become more and more serious.It radiates itself as if it radiates an injustice that everyone can see.But he was impatient to wait for Chantal to come back and explain it all to her.Although, he knew very well that this was a reasonable behavior.Suffering does not come to listen to its own reasons, because it has its own reasons, even if they are irrational.His unreasonable demands were for Chantal's sake, and when she returned she found the room empty without him.Because she had announced that she was going to stay here alone, away from espionage.He put a few bills in his pocket, which were all his property.He hesitated for a while, whether to take the key or not.But in the end, he left them on the little table in the hall.When she sees them, she will know that he will never come back.There are only a few jackets and shirts hanging in the closet.Several books are placed in the bookcase, as if as a souvenir.

He walked out of the room, but he didn't know what to do, the most important thing now was to leave the house that didn't belong to him.Get out of it before he decides where he's going.He didn't allow himself to think about anything until he stood in the street.But only halfway down the stairs, he had a thousand feelings of being divorced from reality.He had to stop in the middle of the stairs, wondering where to go?A quite different suggestion popped into his mind: the little hotel in Paris where Peregaud, who lived with part of his family, always welcomed him with pleasure.While he was thinking about it, a taxi stopped at a red light.He waved.