“How was I to know that it was you? I supposed that you were in New York. I did not think that there was a man on this continent who had a right to kiss me. And even if there was I shouldn’t be expecting him to do so in public. You never kissed me in the street yourself before. What possessed you to do so this time?”
She faced about on the stairs as she spoke, and he stopped and drew a deep breath or two. It takes time to become acclimated to the stairs abroad.
“Don’t be vexed at me,” he implored, “or I shall think that you are not glad that I came; and you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“And after supper to-night we’ll go out and take a good old-fashioned tramp and talk a lot, won’t we?”
They were now before the door of the pension and he was pressing the electric bell. She sighed a resigned sigh of utter submission, nodded acquiescently, and waited beside him.
Anna, a maid whose countenance left much to be divined at pleasure, finally let them in. When she saw that the lady had changed her escort, her face fell and she slightly shook her head as if regretful that one who was so generous should own openly to the vice of fickleness. They went into the long hall and Jack paused to hang his hat upon one of the hooks in that angle by the door; then he overtook his cousin and they went together to the salon, the pretty little salon with its great window, tall white-tiled stove, piano, corner-ways divan, tabouret, table of magazines, quaint Dutch picture of Queen Wilhelmina, and the vase in the corner—that green vase from whose stem hangs the flower-like body of a delicate porcelain nymph.
“You can’t smoke here, you know,” she cautioned him. “If you want to smoke you must go into the corridor.”
“I don’t want to smoke,” he said. “I’ll look out of the window. I like to watch the people.”
So she left him there and sought Ottillie.