Chapter 46

In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one
of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out
into the twilight.

The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul,
looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron
gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive,
and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly
nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home
that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas,
and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his
step-father had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt had hastily
established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a
flying trip to America. They were always coming and going; during the
two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to
New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine: Paul
never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they
were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any
method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that
of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his
mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: "Oh yes--I got a
telegram last week."

He had been almost sure--as sure as he ever was of anything--that he
should find her at home when he arrived; but a message (for she hadn't
had time to telegraph) apprised him that she and Mr. Moffatt had run
down to Deauville to look at a house they thought of hiring for the
summer; they were taking an early train back, and would be at home for
dinner--were in fact having a lot of people to dine.

It was just what he ought to have expected, and had been used to ever
since he could remember; and generally he didn't much mind, especially
since his mother had become Mrs. Moffatt, and the father he had been
most used to, and liked best, had abruptly disappeared from his life.
But the new hotel was big and strange, and his own room, in which there
was not a toy or a book, or one of his dear battered relics (none of
the new servants--they were always new--could find his things, or think
where they had been put), seemed the loneliest spot in the whole house.
He had gone up there after his solitary luncheon, served in the immense
marble dining-room by a footman on the same scale, and had tried to
occupy himself with pasting post-cards into his album; but the newness
and sumptuousness of the room embarrassed him--the white fur rugs
and brocade chairs seemed maliciously on the watch for smears and
ink-spots--and after a while he pushed the album aside