“Mademoiselle Andree? Where is she?” Madeleine asked, presently.
“At home,” said Kendall.
“Ah....” Madeleine’s eyes twinkled.
“Now listen here,” Kendall said, “Andree and I are friends, just friends. We—how do you say it?—camarades. That is all.”
“And you do not love thees Mademoiselle Andree? Not at all?”
“I—” Kendall hesitated and did not answer, and Madeleine’s eyes twinkled as she went on with her cross-examination.
“And thees Mademoiselle Andree—she do not love you?”
“I tell you we are just friends....”
“For example!... I understand. You are just friends. Oh yes. It is possible, because the French girl she is so col’.”
Kendall applied himself to his chocolate and confiture industriously, while Madeleine looked at him with twinkling eyes. If he failed to understand her or her system of life and philosophy, she was equally unable to understand him. If he found the present situation bewildering, she, for her part, regarded him as a strange phenomenon that bordered on the impossible. As a final conclusion she did not believe him in the least, but thought of him as absurdly discreet. No other solution was possible to her.