She said brusquely: “Lipstick and make-up, that’s all!”
He accepted her word for it.
“Oh, I see. Yes, I did think your mouth was paler than most women’s usually are. You looked rather like a nun.”
“Yes-yes-I suppose I did.”
“You look lovely now, really lovely. You are lovely, Laura. You don’t mind my saying so?”
She shook her head. “I don’t mind.”
‘Say it often,’ her inner self was crying. ‘Say it again and again. It’s all I shall ever have.’
“We’re having dinner up here-in my sitting-room. I thought you’d prefer it. But perhaps-you don’t mind?”
He looked at her anxiously.
“I think it’s perfect.”
“I hope the dinner will be perfect. I’m rather afraid it won’t. I’ve never thought much about food until now, but I would like it to be just right for you.”
She smiled at him as she sat down at the table, and he rang for the waiter.
She felt as though she was taking part in a dream.
For this wasn’t the man who had come to see her this morning at the Foundation. This was a different man altogether. A younger man, callow, eager, unsure of himself, desperately anxious to please. She thought suddenly: ‘This was what he was like when he was in his twenties. This is something he’s missed-and he’s gone back into the past to find it.’
For a moment sadness, desperation, swept over her. This wasn’t real. This was a might-have-been that they were acting out together. This was young Llewellyn and young Laura. It was ridiculous and rather pathetic, unsubstantial in time, but oddly sweet.
They dined. The meal was mediocre, but neither of them noticed it. Together they were exploring the Pays du Tendre. They talked, laughed, hardly noticed what they said.
Then, when the waiter finally left, setting coffee on the table, Laura said:
“You know about me-a good deal, anyway, but I know nothing about you. Tell me.”
He told her, describing his youth, his parents and his upbringing.
“Are they still alive?”
“My father died ten years ago, my mother last year..”
“Were they-was she-very proud of you?” “My father, I think, disliked the form my mission took.
Emotional religion repelled him, but he accepted, I think, that there was no other way for me. My mother understood better. She was proud of my world fame-mothers are-but she was sad.”
“Sad?”
“Because of the things-the human things-that I was missing. And because my lack of them separated me from other human beings; and, of course, from her.”
“Yes. I see that.”
She thought about it He went on, telling her his story, a fantastic story it seemed to her. The whole thing was outside her experience, and in some ways it revolted her. She said:
“It’s terribly commercial.”
“The machinery? Oh yes.”
She said: “If only I could understand better. I want to understand. You feel-you felt-that it was really important, really worthwhile.”
“To God?”
She was taken aback.
“No-no, I didn’t mean that. I meant-to you.”
He sighed.
“It’s so hard to explain. I tried to explain to Richard Wilding. The question of whether it was worthwhile never arose. It was a thing I had to do.”
“And suppose you’d just preached to an empty desert, would that have been the same?”
“In my sense, yes. But I shouldn’t have preached so well, of course.” He grinned. “An actor can’t act well to an empty house. An author needs people to read his books. A painter needs to show his pictures.”
“You sound-that’s what I can’t understand-as though the results didn’t interest you.”
“I have no means of knowing what the results were.”
“But the figures, the statistics, the converts-all those things were listed and put down in black and white.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But that’s machinery again, human calculations. I don’t know the results that God wanted, or what he got. But understand this, Laura: if, out of all the millions who came to hear me, God wanted one-just one-soul, and chose that means to reach that soul, it would be enough.”
“It sounds like taking a steam-hammer to crack a nut.”
“It does, doesn’t it, by human standards? That’s always our difficulty, of course; we have to apply human standards of values-or of justice and injustice-to God. We haven’t, can’t have, the faintest knowledge of what God really requires from man, except that it seems highly probable that God requires man to become something that he could be, but hasn’t thought of being yet.”