Spark [Sheldon_Sidney]_The_Other_Side_of_Midnight(BookSe | Page 39

Montparnasse. They had dinner on the Bateau Mouche and finished up by having onion soup at four in the morning at Les Halles with the butchers and truck drivers. Before they were through Larry had collected a large group of friends, and Noelle realized that it was because he had the gift of laughter. He had taught her to laugh and she had not known that laughter was within her. It was like a gift from a god. She was grateful to Larry and very much in love with him. It was dawn when they returned to their hotel room. Noelle was exhausted, but Larry was filled with energy, a restless dynamo. Noelle lay in bed watching him as he stood at the window looking at the sun rise over the rooftops of Paris. “I love Paris,” he said. “It’s like a temple to the best things that men have ever done. It’s a city of beauty and food and love.” He turned to her and grinned, “Not necessarily in that order.” Noelle watched as he took off his clothes and climbed into bed beside her. She held him, loving the feel of him, the male smell of him. She thought of her father and how he had betrayed her. She had been wrong to judge all men by him and Auguste Lanchon. She knew now that there were men like Larry Douglas. And she also knew that there could never be anyone else for her. “Do you know who the two greatest men who ever lived were, Princess?” he was asking. “You,” she said. “Wilbur and Orville Wright. They gave man his real freedom. Have you ever flown?” She shook her head. “We had a summer place in Montauk—that’s at the end of Long Island—and when I was a kid I used to watch the gulls wheel through the air over the beach, riding the current, and I would have given my soul to be up there with them. I knew I wanted to be a flyer before I could walk. A friend of the family took me up in an old biplane when I was nine, and I took my first flying lesson when I was fourteen. That’s when I’m really alive, when I’m in the air.” And later: “There’s going to be a world war. Germany wants to own it all.” “It won’t get France, Larry. No one can cross the Maginot Line.” He snorted: “I’ve crossed it a hundred times.” She looked at him puzzled. “In the air, Princess. This is going to be an air war…my war.” And later, casually: “Why don’t we get married?” It was the happiest moment of Noelle’s life. Sunday was a relaxed, lazy day. They had breakfast at a little outdoor café in Montmartre, went back to the room and spent almost the entire day in bed. Noelle could not believe anyone could be so ecstatic. It was pure magic when they made love, but she was just as content to lie there and listen to Larry talk and watch him as he moved