"Already!" she exclaimed, as if amazed. "But there is not a clock that goes, and I had not the least idea of the hour. Besides, I was splitting my head to fill up this form."
Such was her notion of being exact! He had abandoned an important meeting of a committee which was doing untold mercies to her compatriots in order to keep his appointment with her; and she, whose professional business it was that evening to charm him and harmonise with him, had merely flouted the appointment. Nevertheless, her gestures and smile as she rose and came towards him were so utterly exquisite that immediately he also flouted the appointment. What, after all, could it matter whether they dined at eight, nine, or even ten o'clock?
"Thou wilt pardon me, monster?" she murmured, kissing him.
No woman had ever put her chin up to his as she did, nor with a glance expressed so unreserved a surrender to his masculinity.
She went on, twining languishingly round him:
"I do not know whether I ought to go out. I am yet far from—It is perhaps imprudent."
"Absurd!" he protested—he could not bear the thought of her not dining with him. He knew too well the desolation of a solitary dinner. "Absurd! We go in a taxi. The restaurant is warm. We return in a taxi."
"To please thee, then."
"What is that form?"