A Young Man's Heart by Cornell Woolrich

apart. “Who is Serrano?”
    “Don’t bend over like that, you worry me. I introduced him to you two nights ago just as we were getting into the carriage. You dropped your handkerchief on the stairs and he came after us to give it back to you. Don’t you recall?”
    “Oh, yes, my handkerchief,” she said.
    “I suppose he’d already had me placed as the husband for quite some time. At any rate, he’d been making himself agreeable to me all week before that. I felt I knew him well enough, as far as things go in a place like this. He’s secretary to the Argentine minister, or something.”
    She frowned slightly and looked past him. “Then you’d rather not have the first dance with me yourself?”
    “Of course I would, you know I would. That isn’t what he meant at all. You know their flowery language: ‘Compliment your lovely wife for me, and may I rob you of one of her dances?’ ”
    She narrowed her eyes as though she were pleased, but by her answer showed herself to be anything but pleased. “Suppose I were to tell you I intend to dance every piece with you?”
    Flattered, he nevertheless tried to point out a more reasonable course.
    “You know I’m not terribly light on my feet. I’d rather sit and watch you enjoy yourself. Besides, I want you to know people.”
    They locked their door and went downstairs, Eleanor, in her orange dress, a little in advance, like a slender brightly blazing torch that miraculously failed to char the walls she brushed against.
    Serrano was sitting alone at a wicker table arranged for three, two of its chairs tilted forward in token of prospective occupancy. He rose by way of acknowledgment and stood behind his chair as they entered the patio, as Eleanor entered it, rather.
     
    5
     
    Blair returned at sundown. As he entered the room the sun’s reflection still played about the base of the walls, dyeing them waveringly orange. But his face, in the glow, seemed flushed more from within than without. Eleanor was sitting at the mirror. She hardly turned her head, but seeing him in the glass, spoke to him as though he were in front of her instead of behind her.
    “I’ve been lying down until now. I had a bath. Is it still so terribly warm out?”
    “Frightfully. Or at least it seems so to me now. I didn’t notice it at first. Then about half an hour ago a sickly wave of heat or something seemed to rise up all around me. I’ve been feeling it ever since.”
    “Why didn’t you take a carriage? You should be more careful.”
    “A little over half an hour ago I came across our friend Serrano sitting in front of a café. He asked me to sit down with him, and ordered some refreshment or other I don’t even remember touching. Then he insisted on paying for it, and brought out his wallet—” Something dropped in front of her. “Is this yours?”
    She glanced down at the frivolous petal of handkerchief that had not been there a moment ago.
    “Yes—no—I don’t think so—”
    Ignoring the startled way in which she was now looking at him, he opened a drawer of the dressing table, which crowded her arm aside as it was brought forward, and took out a little flask.
    “Is this the perfume you’re in the habit of using?”
    “L’Origan, yes.”
    He shook it, amusingly enough (though she found that nothing was amusing at the moment), and held it to his nostrils.
    “It’s the same as on the handkerchief. That’s what made me so sure, without knowing why. Scents, they say, do something to the memory. When he first opened the wallet, before I even saw it, you came before me from head to foot just as I see you each day.”
    “How perfectly stupid,” she said with an injured air. “Hundreds of women use l’Origan.”
    “If it isn’t yours, of course, I owe him an apology. For a moment I nearly fought him about it. I openly asked, ‘Has my wife lost her handkerchief again? I see you have it in your wallet.’ He told me I was mistaken, it was someone else’s. I said,