Presently the poke-bonnet was raised; Charles Cunningham beheld his companion’s face, a perfect oval, set with eyes of deepest brown, demurely passionate, eyes that in this empty street were all for him. He had never considered himself a romantic young man; when this encounter had faded to a mere flush upon the dreamy sky of the past, he was always a little scornful of his first remark, and apt to wonder how the deuce he ever came to make it.
“By Jove! vous savez, vous êtes tout à fait comme un oiseau!”
“Eh, alors?” she murmured, in a tone that was neither defiance nor archness nor indifference nor invitation, but something that was compounded of all four and expressed exactly herself. “Eh, alors?”
“Votre nid est loin d’ici?” he asked.
Nor did he blush for the guise of his speech at the time: afterward it struck him as most indecorously poetic.
“Viens donc,” she whispered.
“Comment appelez-vous?”
“Moi, je suis Adèle.”
“Adèle quoi?” he pressed.
“Mais Adèle alors, tout simplement ça.”