“Yes, it is; it was after four when we left the pension. I know it’s after five now.”
“It is not after five,” he declared calmly; “it is not after five because it is after six.”
She laughed again; he looked at her, smiling brightly himself.
“It is good together, n’est-ce pas?” he said, putting his hand upon her arm as they turned back upon their steps. There was in his eyes the happy look that dispelled every trace of the usual shadow on his face. “We are again those same children,” he went on, “children that the same toy amuses both. What pleasures you always makes joy for me also.”
Something came up in her throat as she listened. It might have been a choke, but she was so positive that it was only Genoa that she swallowed it at once and looked in the opposite direction. He had kept his hand upon her arm, and now he bent his head a little and said, his voice lowering:
“I think—”
The dusk was gathering heavily. The Siegesthor loomed blackly great against the lights of the city beyond. It was no longer quiet about them, but the hum and buzz of all the bees swarming home was in the air, on the pavement, along the trolley wires.
“I think,”—he said, his fingers closing about her arm,—“I think that we might be always very happy together.”
She looked up quickly, and then down yet more quickly.
“Why do you speak that way when you know that I am going so soon?”