In the dim underwater light they dressed and straightened up the room, and then they went across the hall to the kitchen.
She was intimidated by the stove.
He found the pilot light and turned on one of the burners for her.
The gas flamed up two inches high.
They found the teakettle.
And put water on to boil and then searched through the icebox.
Several sections of a loaf of dark bread;
butter;
jam;
a tiny cake of ice.
In their search for what turned out to be the right breakfast china but the wrong table silver, they opened every cupboard door in the kitchen and pantry.
While she was settling the teacart, he went back across the hall to their bedroom, opened one of the suitcases, and took out powdered coffee and sugar.
She appeared with the teacart and he opened the windows.

"Do you want to call Eugene"?

He didn't, but it was not really a question, and so he left the room, walked down the hall to the front of the apartment, hesitated, and then knocked lightly on the closed door of the study.
A sleepy voice answered.

"Le petit dejeuner", Harold said, in an accent that did credit to Miss Sloan, his high-school French teacher.
At the same time, his voice betrayed uncertainty about their being here, and conveyed an appeal to whatever is reasonable, peace-loving, and dependable in everybody.

Since ordinary breakfast-table conversation was impossible, it was at least something that they were able to offer Eugene the sugar bowl with their sugar in it, and the plate of bread and butter, and that Eugene could return the pitcher of hot milk to them handle first.
Eugene put a spoonful of powdered coffee into his cup and then filled it with hot water.
Stirring, he said: "I am sorry that my work prevents me from doing anything with you today".

They assured him that they did not expect or need to be entertained.

Harold put a teaspoonful of powdered coffee in his cup and filled it with hot water, and then, stirring, he sat back in his chair.
The chair creaked.
Every time he moved or said something, the chair creaked again.

Eugene was not entirely silent, or openly rude -- unless asking Harold to move to another chair and placing himself in the fauteuil that creaked so alarmingly was an act of rudeness.
It went right on creaking under his own considerable weight, and all it needed, Harold thought, was for somebody to fling himself back in a fit of laughter and that would be the end of it.

Through the open window they heard sounds below in the street: cartwheels, a tired horse's plodding step, voices.
Harold indicated the photograph on the wall and asked what church the stone sculpture was in.
Eugene told him and he promptly forgot.
They passed the marmalade, the bread, the black-market butter, back and forth.
Nothing was said about hotels or train journeys.

Eugene offered Harold his car, to use at any time he cared to, and when this offer was not accepted, the armchair creaked.
They all three had another cup of coffee.
Eugene was in his pajamas and dressing gown, and on his large feet he wore yellow Turkish slippers that turned up at the toes.

"Excuse me", he said in Berlitz English, and got up and left them, to bathe and dress.

The first shrill ring of the telephone brought Harold out into the hall.
He realized that he had no idea where the telephone was.
At that moment the bathroom door flew open and Eugene came out, with his face lathered for shaving, and strode down the hall, tying the sash of his dressing gown as he went.
The telephone was in the study but the ringing came from the hall.
Between the telephone and the wall plug there was sixty feet of cord, and when the conversation came to an end, Eugene carried the instrument with him the whole length of the apartment, to his bathroom, where it rang three more times while he was shaving and in the tub.
Before he left the apartment he knocked on their door and asked if there was anything he could do for them.
Harold shook his head.

"Sabine called a few minutes ago", Eugene said.
"She wants you and Barbara to have dinner with her tomorrow night".

He handed Harold a key to the front door, and cautioned him against leaving it unlocked while they were out of the apartment.

When enough time had elapsed so that there was little likelihood of his returning for something he had forgotten, Harold went out into the hall and stood looking into one room after another.
In the room next to theirs was a huge cradle, of mahogany, ornately carved and decorated with gold leaf.
It was the most important-looking cradle he had ever seen.
Then came their bathroom, and then a bedroom that, judging by the photographs on the walls, must belong to Mme Cestre.
A young woman who looked like Alix, with her two children.
Alix and Eugene on their wedding day.
Matching photographs in oval frames of Mme Bonenfant and an elderly man who must be Alix's grandfather.
Mme Vienot, considerably younger and very different.
The schoolboy.
And a gray-haired man whose glance -- direct, lifelike, and mildly accusing -- was contradicted by the gilt and black frame.
It was the kind of frame that is only put around the photograph of a dead person.
Professor Cestre, could it be?

With the metal shutters closed, the dining room was so dark that it seemed still night in there.
One of the drawing-room shutters was partly open and he made out the shapes of chairs and sofas, which seemed to be upholstered in brown or russet velvet.
The curtains were of the same material, and there were some big oil paintings -- portraits in the style of Lancret and Boucher.

Though, taken individually, the big rooms were, or seemed to be, square, the apartment as a whole formed a triangle.
The apex, the study where Eugene slept, was light and bright and airy and cheerful.
The window looked out on the Place Redoute -- it was the only window of the apartment that did.
Looking around slowly, he saw a marble fireplace, a desk, a low bookcase of mahogany with criss-crossed brass wire instead of glass panes in the doors.
The daybed Eugene had slept in, made up now with its dark-brown velours cover and pillows.
The portable record player with a pile of classical records beside it.
Beethoven's Fifth was the one on top.
Da-da-da-dum Music could not be Eugene's passion.
Besides, the records were dusty.
He tried the doors of the bookcase.
Locked.
The titles he could read easily through the criss-crossed wires: works on theology, astral physics, history, biology, political science.
No poetry.
No novels.
He moved over to the desk and stood looking at the papers on it but not touching anything.
The clock on the mantel piece was scandalized and ticked so loudly that he glanced at it over his shoulder and then quickly left the room.

The concierge called out to them as they were passing through the foyer.
Her quarters were on the right as you walked into the building, and her small front room was clogged with heavy furniture -- a big, round, oak dining table and chairs, a buffet, with a row of unclaimed letters inserted between the mirror and its frame.
The suitcases had come while they were out, and had been put in their room, the concierge said.

He waited until they were inside the elevator and then said: "Now what do we do"?

"Call the Vouillemont, I guess".

"I guess".

Rather than sit around waiting for the suitcases to be delivered, they had gone sight-seeing.
They went to the Flea Market, expecting to find the treasures of Europe, and found instead a duplication of that long double row of booths in Tours.
Cheap clothing and junk of every sort, as far as the eye could see.
They looked, even so.
Looked at everything.
Barbara bought some cotton aprons, and Harold bought shoestrings.
They had lunch at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the intersection of two broad, busy, unpicturesque streets, and coming home they got lost in the Metro;
it took them over an hour to get back to the station where they should have changed, in order to take the line that went to the Place Redoute.
It was the end of the afternoon when he took the huge key out of his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
When he opened the door, there stood Eugene, on his way out of the apartment.
He was wearing sneakers and shorts and an open-collared shirt, and in his hand he carried a little black bag.
He did not explain where he was going, and they did not ask.
Instead, they went on down the hall to their room.

"Do you think he could be having an affair"?
Barbara asked, as they heard the front door close.

"Oh no", Harold said, shocked.

"Well, this is France, after all".

"I know, but there must be some other explanation.
He's probably spending the evening with friends".

"And for that he needs a little bag"?

They went shopping in the neighborhood, and bought two loaves of bread with the ration coupons they had been given in Blois, and some cheese, and a dozen eggs, and a bag of oranges from a peddler in the Place Redoute -- the first oranges they had seen since they landed.
They had Vermouth, sitting in front of a cafe.
When they got home Harold was grateful for the stillness in the apartment, and thought how, under different circumstances, they might have stayed on here, in these old-fashioned, high-ceilinged rooms that reminded him of the Irelands' apartment in the East Eighties.
They could have been perfectly happy here for ten whole days.

He went down the hall to Eugene's bathroom, to turn on the hot-water heater, and on the side of the tub he saw a pair of blue wool swimming trunks.
He felt them.
They were damp.
He reached out and felt the bath towel hanging on the towel rack over the tub.
Damp also.
He looked around the room and then called out: "Come here, quick"?

"What is it"?
Barbara asked, standing in the doorway.
"I've solved the mystery of the little bag.
There it is and there is what was in it.
But where do people go swimming in Paris?
That boat in the river, maybe".

"What boat"?

"There's a big boat anchored near the Place De La Concorde, with a swimming pool in it -- didn't you notice it?
But if he has time to go swimming, he had time to be with us".

She looked at him in surprise.

"I know", he said, reading her mind.

"I don't know what I'm going to do with you".

"It's because we are in France", he said, "and know so few people.
So something like this matters more than it would at home.
Also, he was so nice when he was nice".

"All because I didn't feel like dancing".

"I don't think it was that, really".

"Then what was it"?

"I don't know.
I wish I did.
The tweed coat, maybe.
The thing about Eugene is that he's very proud".

And the thing about hurt feelings, the wet bathing suit pointed out, is that the person who has them is not quite the innocent party he believes himself to be.
For instance -- what about all those people Harold Rhodes went toward unhesitatingly, as if this were the one moment they would ever have together, their one chance of knowing each other?

Fortunately, the embarrassing questions raised by objects do not need to be answered, or we would all have to go sleep in the open fields.
And in any case, answers may clarify but they do not change anything.