He nodded and kissed the top of her head and then turned her head and held it and kissed her lips.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
A long time later they were lying each holding the other close and she said, “And you love me just the way I am? You’re sure.
“Yes,” he said. “So much yes.”
“Because I’m going to be changed.”
“No,” he said. “No. Not changed.”
“I’m going to,” she said. “It’s for you. It’s for me too. I won’t pretend it’s not. But it will do something to you. I’m sure but I shouldn’t say it.”
“I like surprises but I like everything the way it is just now at this minute.”
“Then maybe I shouldn’t do it,” she said. “Oh I’m sad. It was such a wonderful dangerous surprise. I thought about it for days and I didn’t decide until this morning.”
“If it’s something you really want.”
“It is,” she said. “And I’m going to do it. You’ve liked every thing we’ve done so far haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
She slipped out of bed and stood straight with her long brown legs and her beautiful body tanned evenly from the far beach where they swam without suits. She held her shoulders back and her chin up and she shook her head so her heavy tawny hair slapped around her cheeks and then bowed forward so it all fell forward and covered her face. She pulled the striped shirt over her head and then shook her hair back and then sat in the chair in front of the mirror on the dresser and brushed it back looking
at it critically. It fell to the top of her shoulders. She shook her head at the mirror. Then she pulled on her slacks and belted them and put on her faded blue rope-soled shoes.
“I have to ride up to Aigues Mortes,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll come too.”
“No. I have to go alone. It’s about the surprise.”
She kissed him goodbye and went down and he watched her mount her bicycle and go up the road riding smoothly and easily, her hair blowing in the wind.
The afternoon sun was in the window now and the room was too warm. The young man washed and put on his clothes and went down to walk on the beach. He knew he should swim but he was tired and after he had walked along the beach and then along a path through the salt grass that led inland for a way he went back along the beach to the port and climbed up to the cafe. In the cafe he found the paper and ordered himself a fine l’eau because he felt empty and hollow from making love.
They had been married three weeks and had come down on the train from Paris to Avignon with their bicycles, a suitcase with their town clothes, and a rucksack and a musette bag. They stayed at a good hotel in Avignon and left the suitcase there and had thought that they would ride to the Pont du Gard. But the mistral was blowing so they rode with the mistral down to Nimes and stayed there at the Imperator and then had ridden down to Aigues Mortes still with the heavy wind behind them and then on to le Grau du Roi. They had been there ever since.
It had been wonderful and they had been truly happy and he had not known that you could love anyone so much that you cared about nothing else and other things seemed inexistent. He had many problems when he married but he had thought of none of them here nor of writing nor of anything but being with this girl whom he loved and was married to and he did not have the sudden deadly clarity that had always come after intercourse.
That was gone. Now when they had made love they would eat and drink and make love again. It was a very simple world and he had never been truly happy in any other. He thought that it must be the same with her and certainly she acted in that way but today there had been this thing about the change and the surprise. But maybe it would be a happy change and a good surprise. The brandy and water as he drank it and read the local paper made him look forward to whatever it was.