Entering, he made a reservation and paid the deposit money. During the next hour she was so sweet to him, so sad, that they raced back through the thickening night, arriving just as the last clerk was leaving, and canceled the booking.
“Did you mean it?” she whispered.
“Well, didn’t I?”
“But do tell me,” she pleaded. “If you don’t, I shall never be at rest.”
He slipped his arm into hers without rebuff. “Odd little, dear little Princess, was it likely?”
After that, when in this mood of self-effacement, she would insist without fear of being taken seriously that he should sail.
“If you don’t, I’ll refuse to see you ever again. But,” she would add, “that’s only if you really are stopping here on my account.”
To relieve her conscience of responsibility he would lie like a corsair, bolstering up the fiction that business was his sole reason for remaining.
“Then, it’s your funeral, isn’t it?”
“My funeral,” he echoed solemnly.