“I shall like that. And now let me see your hand. Something is the matter with it.” He examined her palm gravely, then placed a franc upon it and closed her fingers tightly. “There, that will cure it, I think.... And you will not forget me—and you will think about going back to America with me?”
“Yes, monsieur,” she said, very gravely.
Kendall rejoined Bert and they walked together to the Étoile and down the Champs Élysées to the hotel which sheltered the huge office staff of the American Expeditionary Force in Paris.
“I hope everything goes off right to-night,” said Kendall, who was still a trifle dubious despite Andree’s expressed desire to meet Bert and his friend.
“Sure. We’ll make it a regular party,” Bert said, confidently. “What’s worrying you?”
“You never can tell how strange girls will get on together.”
“Fiddlesticks!... Madeleine will get on with anybody. See you at the house at seven.”
Promptly at seven Kendall was awaiting Andree at the entrance to the Metro in the Place de la Concorde, and promptly at the hour she appeared, walking leisurely, as she always seemed to do, and with an air of not seeing him at all until she was very close to him, an air which he came to associate with their meetings. There was something diffident about it, something modest and maidenly that he liked.... Then she would pause, always hesitatingly, as if she rather doubted her welcome, and look up into his face without the vestige of a smile, expecting him to extend his hand, and then she would shake hands very gravely. It was always so.
“You have made much work to-day?... You are fatigué?” she asked.
“But, no.... And you?”