The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre

at ease.
    Mathieu noticed near his feet three half-smoked gold-tipped cigarettes.
    ‘There’s been a very nervy person in this cab.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘It was a woman,’ said Ivich, ‘I can see the marks of lipstick.’
    They smiled and fell silent. Mathieu said: ‘I once found a hundred francs in a taxi.’
    ‘You must have been pleased.’
    ‘Oh, I gave them to the chauffeur.’
    ‘Did you?’ said Ivich. ‘I should have kept them. Why did you do that?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Mathieu.
    The taxi crossed the Place Saint-Michel.
    Mathieu was on the point of saying: ‘Look how green the Seine is,’ but he said nothing. Ivich suddenly remarked: ‘Boris suggested we might all three go to the Sumatra this evening — I should rather like to...’
    She turned her head, and was looking at Mathieu’s hair, tilting her mouth towards him with a touch of affectionate coquetry. Ivich was not precisely a flirt, but from time to time she assumed an affectionate air for the pleasure of sensing the heavy, fruit-like sleekness of her face. Mathieu thought it an irritating and rather silly pose.
    ‘I shall be glad to see Boris and to be with you,’ he said, ‘But what bothers me a little, as you know, is Lola: she can’t stand me.’
    ‘What does that matter?’
    A silence followed. It was as though they had both simultaneously realized that they were a man and a woman, enclosed together in a taxi. ‘It oughtn’t to be so,’ he said to himself with annoyance. And Ivich continued: ‘I don’t myself think that Lola is worth troubling about. She’s good-looking, and she sings well, that’s all.’
    ‘I find her sympathetic.’
    ‘Naturally. That’s your attitude, you always must be perfect. The moment people dislike you, you do your best to discover virtues in them. I don’t find her sympathetic,’ she added.
    ‘She is charming to you.’
    ‘She can’t behave otherwise: but I don’t like her, she’s always acting a part.’
    ‘Acting a part?’ said Mathieu, raising his eyebrows: ‘that’s the last thing I should have accused her of doing.’
    ‘It’s odd you shouldn’t have noticed it: she heaves sighs as large as herself to make people believe she’s in despair, and then orders herself a nice little dinner.’
    And she added with sly malice: ‘I should have thought that when people were in despair they didn’t mind dying: I’m always surprised when I see her adding up every penny she spends, and saving money.’
    ‘That doesn’t prevent her being desperate. It’s just what people do when they’re getting old: when they’re sick of themselves and their life, they think of money and take care of themselves.’
    ‘Well, one oughtn’t ever to get old,’ said Ivich, dryly.
    He looked at her puzzledly and hurriedly added: ‘You’re right, it isn’t nice to be old.’
    ‘Oh, but you aren’t any age,’ said Ivich. ‘I have the feeling that you have always been as you are now, you’ve got a kind of mineral youthfulness. I sometimes try to imagine what you were like as a boy, but I can’t.’
    ‘I had curly hair,’ said Mathieu.
    ‘Well, I picture you just as you are today, except for being a little smaller.’
    This time Ivich probably did not know that she was looking affectionate. Mathieu wanted to speak, but there was an odd irritation in his throat, and he was suddenly outside himself. Away behind him were Marcelle, Sarah, and the interminable hospital corridors in which he had been wandering since the morning, he was no longer anywhere at all; he felt free. The dense, warm mass of a summer day came close to him, and he longed to plunge headlong into it. For one more second he seemed suspended in the void, with an agonizing sense of freedom, and then, abruptly, he reached out his arm, took Ivich by the shoulders, and clasped her to him. Ivich yielded stiffly, all of a piece, as though she were losing her balance. She said nothing: and her face was utterly