"I shall be frightfully late!"
"It is impossible to be late where time does not exist."
"Is that Jacqueline with my coffee?" she said, listening, and ran back to her room, pulling him after her.
Yes, she admitted she was a perfect child, but she could not help it. While she drank the coffee he put on his eyeglasses and opened the newspapers, one English, one French. She went into the bathroom.
"Felix! Felix!" she called presently from the bathroom. "Bring me in that soft towel I've left on the chair by the writing-table."
Then she returned to the bedroom and did her abundant glossy chestnut hair, and by innumerable small stages dressed. He was reading his papers, but she knew that he was also watching her, and she loved him to watch her dress, from the first stage to the last. She was too young to have anything to conceal, and his pleasure, which he tried to mask, was so obvious. He dropped The Times and turned to the French paper.
"Felix, do you know what?"
"What?"
"I'm frightfully ashamed of not being able to speak French. If I could only speak it a quarter as well as you do."
"That's nothing. I couldn't say two words without a Frenchman knowing instantly that I wasn't French."