“Once or twice I’ve done good business on the Lido. There’s a boat just going to start. Shall we go on board, Julius?”
I agreed eagerly and followed her on to the little boat. She set me down in the bows, went off with her basket, and presently came back without it. “I’ve left it with the captain,” she explained; “he knows me already, and will take care of it for me. No more work to-day, since you’ve come! And you must give me lunch, as you used to at Ste. Maxime. Somewhere very humble, because I’m in my working clothes.” She indicated the black frock, and the black shawl which she wore over her fair hair, after the fashion of the Venetian girls; I was myself in an uncommonly shabby suit of pre-war tweeds; we matched well enough so far as gentility was concerned. I studied her face. It had grown older, rather sharper in outline, though not lined or worn. And it still preserved its serenity; she still seemed to look out on this troublesome world, with all its experiences and vicissitudes, from somewhere else, from an inner sanctum in which she dwelt and from which no one could wholly draw her forth.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her, as the little steamboat sped on its short passage across to the Lido.
“Oh, about a fortnight or three weeks. I like it, and I got work at once. I’d rather sew than sell, but they sew so well here! And they tell me I sell so well. So selling it mainly is!”
“Then you came before the—the result of the lottery?”
“Oh, you’ve heard about the lottery, have you? From Arsenio, or——?”
“No. I just saw it in the papers.”
The mention of the lottery seemed to afford her fresh amusement, but she said nothing more about it at the moment. “You see, I wanted to come away from the Riviera—never mind why!”
“I believe I know why!”