The girl tripped along, almost birdlike in the carriage of her head and in the ensemble of her daintiness. At the Place de la Concorde she turned to her left up the rue Boissy d’Anglas, on one corner of which is the Hôtel Crillon and on the other a high, blank wall of brick. The street was deserted.
Kendall summoned his resolution and overtook her as she entered the shadow of the brick wall. He was rather excited and apprehensive, and stammered a bit as he lifted his hat and said in his best French, “Bon jour, mademoiselle.”
She stopped suddenly and slowly raised her eyes to his face. She was not startled, not frightened, not thrown from her poise in the least.
“Bon jour, monsieur,” she said, with a rising inflection, as one who expresses surprise and inquiry.
Kendall was at a loss. He did not know how to proceed or how to make plausible his action. What little French he knew departed from him, and he stood awkwardly by her side, feeling very idiotic indeed. She waited gravely, with no twinkle in her eye at the rather absurd figure he must have presented.
“Voulez-vous promenade avec moi?” he managed to articulate, at last.
“Pourquoi?” she asked.
Why? Why should she promenade with him? He felt his face reddening, and it was his impulse to clap on his cap and beat a hasty retreat. What answer was there to that why? He could think of nothing whatever to say, and the pause became awkward.
“Parlez-vous anglais?” he asked, desperately.
“Non.”