Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/56

"Yes, the years fly by!" Instinctively Lepetit passed his hand over his thinning hair. "Youth is gone; only the desire remains. Life laughs at me." He shook his head mournfully. "When I was young I looked for a blonde, but fate provided me with a brunette-now I'd settle for any kind-even a girl in a red wig!" He gulped down a fresh glass of Burgundy. "She keeps me in suspense, as though I were a young student, a pimple-faced adolescent! What a nerve! I'll ring the waiter and tell him to get me a girl-they're all alike in their skins." He went over to the table and poured himself a fourth glass of wine. "Waiting, waiting-a whole week waiting to meet her. My nerves are stretched to the breaking point...No, absolutely not! I won't let that minx lead me around by the nose, like a trained bear!" He poured himself another glass and dashed it to the carpeted floor.

• * *

It was with a particularly heightened feeling of excitement that Monique Levitan prepared for her meeting with Lepetit. According to her plan, this was to be the last meeting. Tomorrow she would quit her job; on Wednesday she would have the automobile; on Thursday her friend Rae would be arriving-and then adieu, Paris. New roads stretched out before her. Like long, black velvet ribbons they fluttered off, pointing the way to Nice, Biarritz, Monte Carlo. Paris was played out, like an old harpy with down-at-the-heel shoes, shuffling along the Champs Elysees. She was not going to be one of those. She wasn't going to join that desperate shuffle. She, the refined Parisienne, wasn't going to waste her youth on an old, sentimental, doddering fool. She was born to swim in luxury. Why, even her delicate health demanded it. That's the way nature had created her-just as it created rare blossoms and exotic plants.