Seated upon the dashboard of her wounded car,
Fanny had drummed her heels for warmth since morning, and seemed likely
soon to drum them upon a carpet of snow. Beneath the car a dark stream
of oil marked the road, and the oil still dripped from the differential
case, where the back axle lay in two halves.
"I will telephone to your garage," her "client" had promised, as he
climbed on to a passing lorry and continued his journey into Nancy. With
that she had to be content, while she waited, first without her lunch,
and then without her tea, for the breakdown lorry which his telephone
message would eventually bring to her aid. Now it was nearly four
o'clock. She had been hungry, but was hungry no longer. The bitter cold
made her forehead ache, and though every moment the blue and mauve
shades thickened upon the sky no flake of snow had fallen.
Only last night, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been preparing for
the dance; and only last night she had said to Julien ... What had she
said to Julien? What had he said to her? Again she was deep in a reverie
that had lasted all day, that had kept her warm, had fed her.
She was almost asleep when a man's voice woke her, and she found a car
with three Americans drawn up beside her.
"I guess this is too bad," said the man who had woken her. "We passed
you this morning on our way into Nancy, and here you are still looking
as though you had never moved.
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