"On the part of Monsieur Cannon, one of your clients, Monsieur Cannon of London. Has there arrived a telegram for him?"
She waited. The squalor of the public box increased the effect of her young and proud stylishness and of her perfume. George waited, humbled by her superior skill in the arts of life, and saying anxiously to himself: "Perhaps in a moment I shall know the result," almost trembling.
She hung up the instrument, and, with a glance at George, shook her head.
"There isn't anything," she murmured.
He said:
"It's very queer, isn't it? However ..."
As they emerged from the arcana of the grand stand, Lois was stopped by a tall, rather handsome Jew, who, saluting her with what George esteemed to be French exaggeration of gesture, nevertheless addressed her in a confidential tone in English. George, having with British restraint acknowledged the salute, stood aside, and gazed discreetly away from the pair. He could not hear what was being said. After several minutes Lois rejoined George, and they went back into the crowds and the sun. She did not speak. She did not utter one word. Only, when the numbers went up for a certain race, she remarked:
"This is the Prix du Cadran. It's the principal race of the afternoon."
And when that was over, amid cheering that ran about the field like fire through dried bush, she added:
"I think I ought to go back now. I told the chauffeur to be here after the Prix du Cadran. What time is it exactly?"