Mrs. Jones was leisurely about coming back. She did not want to inconvenience them too much, but she did want to find the salon empty on her return, and she found it so.
While she was smiling and settling herself, they were going down the three flights of stairs and out of the large main door. The rain had ceased but it was still blackly and distinctly wet. Von Ibn had a tightly rolled umbrella which he held with a grasp that somehow suggested thoughts of their other promenade at nightfall.
“You can walk well, yes?” he said, as they turned in the direction of the Isar.
“In this skirt,” she laughed, glancing down at her costume whose original foundations had been laid for golf, “in this skirt I am equal to anything!”
“But if you slip?” he supposed, anxiously.
“You ought to see the soles of my boots. I sent them to the little shoemaker in the Wurzerstrasse and he soled them with rubber half an inch thick.”
“How much is an inch?” he asked.
“Twice the width of the rubber on my boots.”
“No, but earnestly,” he said, “is it a centimètre?”
“Two centimètres and a half make one inch.”