Daisy shook her head.
"Of course, it happened before you came. When I was there during the war." She related briefly the tale of Pierre's determination to fight for his country. "And the other day we met again quite by accident."
"And no doubt will go on meeting quite by accident," said Daisy dryly.
"I must take Mac somewhere," Mary protested.
Two days later she met Pierre by the banks of the Serpentine on a May noon that held the city in a web of silver. The tall houses of Bayswater, reflected in that shimmering expanse of water, appeared like the battlements of an enchanted palace above the trees that masked their prosaic beginnings. The white peacocks haunting the slopes toward Hyde Park made one feel that life was a dream and that the children and nurses, the meditative loiterers, even the old maids with their pet dogs, would all presently be turned into birds to fly above this cloud-cuckoo-town of London.
No sooner were they seated on two of those green chairs, which in their emptiness speak as eloquently as musical instruments of latent emotions, than Pierre took Mary's hand and said: "Mademoiselle, I have given up Marechal et Cie. Presently I shall find something better to do. But so long as I was their employé I could not tell you that I loved you. At this moment I am poor, but I am free. Mary, I hope you will love me until I can win you in marriage?"
She let her hand remain in his. Citizen and citizeness of cloud-cuckoo-town, they floated far above ordinary life.
"I only know that I love you, Pierre," she whispered.
He bent over and touched her fingers with his lips. Then for a long time they sat in silence.