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Felix was well aware of his foolishness in having made of his quiet love for A
Felix was not as i
But then of course there had been Marie-Laure Auboyer. Felix hoped he had succeeded in putting Mildred off the scent as far as Marie-Laure was concerned, for Mildred went on and on as soon as she got an idea into her head, and Felix was feeling rather sensitive and worried about Marie-Laure. He had met her in Singapore, where she was working in the French consulate and he was Intelligence adviser to the C.-in-C. Felix spoke fluent French, and when he was not away visiting Australia or India or Hong Kong he had spent a lot of his time with the French colony. Marie-Laure had fallen in love with him instantly. Felix was used to impressing girls and did not at first notice her very much. He took her out occasionally, in a rather routine way, as he took out one or two other girls to dance at Prince's or to swim at the Tanglin or to drink at the Cockpit or to dine at the Raffles grill, and they were witty in French together about various subjects not excluding Marie-Laure's attachment, which he found she was able to treat with a satisfactory dryness. She was, certainly an intelligent girl.
Then he began to want rather badly to go to bed with her. This was, just at that time, not easy, as she shared a flat with a SABENA airline typist of domestic habits, and he himself lived in the Senior Officers' Mess, a rather grim place presided over in effect by the Head Matron of the military hospital, who was herself a full Colonel. At length the typist went on leave and Felix got what he wanted. He was shaken by it. Once he had gained possession of Marie-Laure he saw her in a different light. Her very touching beauty and tenderness combined with the highly intelligent way in which she dealt with him, her developed sense of the strategy and tactics of love, impressed him and began to attach him. But then he began to feel afraid.
The period that followed, during which Felix's departure from Singapore became imminent, seemed in his memory to drip with colours almost too vivid to bear. There was something drugged about it, something over-rich. It seemed as if at that time it was always moonlight, the hot moonlight nights as bright as day, and that he was eternally in evening-dress wandering slightly drunk with Marie-Laure through endless gardens with lights hanging from the frangipani whose great lotus-like flowers gave out an overwhelming powdery fragrance, attracting white furry moths the size of sparrows. Or else he was lying endlessly with Marie-Laure upon her bed — the SABENA typist had inevitably by now been confided in — while the devastating rain beat down outside and the sweat poured quietly off their momentarily disjoined bodies. It was a time on which Felix looked back with an agitated fascination and many misgivings. He had never so entirely surrendered to a woman. He did not approve.
He had never, during this time, said anything to Marie-Laure which could lead her to regard this episode as more than ephemeral; and it was only her clever gentleness and tact which prevented him from feeling a cad. But he was aware of how far his behaviour must seem to commit him, and he knew that she hoped. When the time came for him to go he had not had the heart entirely to crush these hopes. They parted as people who would meet again; and when Felix asked himself whether he had, out of misplaced kindness, misled her, he found himself wondering whether his concern not to hurt her feelings did not rather mask from him some deep desire of his own somehow, somewhere to be with Marie-Laure again. He shook his head over this and decided he must be firm with himself. He did not want to be seriously entangled with a French girl. He was not really in love with Marie-Laure, he thought, not quietly and deeply and with all his soul in love, as he could be with an English girl. There was a whole area of his being which could not communicate with Marie-Laure at all. And that brought him back to the problem of A
When Felix had left Singapore it had been fairly certain that his next post would be in India. He was designated to be the Military Adviser to the U. K. High Commissioner in Delhi, liaison officer with the Indian A
Briefed by Mildred, he had attempted to make a sober estimate of the possible outcome of the situation upon which his fate must depend. Would Randall go or wouldn't he? Would he, exasperatingly, go only partly, go, but not quite enough? If he went off openly, entirely, irrevocably, Felix would feel free to act. But short of that he must hesitate, he must hold his hand. Felix shied away from the thought of stealing another man's wife. That was an action he could not perform. If the man abandoned his wife, that was another matter. But would he?