On the boat there was a bridal couple. He watched them, trying to discover with how much discretion honeymoon people were supposed to act.
On French soil the gayety of his adventure caught him. One day they would repeat it; she would travel with him openly from London, and it wouldn’t be an experiment From Calais he would have liked to send a telegram—but to where? She was still elusive. The train was delayed in starting. He fumed and fretted; if it arrived late he might lose her. For the last hour, as he was nearing Paris, he sat with his watch in his hand.
Before they were at a standstill, he had leapt to the platform, glancing this way and that. He had begun to despair, when a slight figure in a muslin dress emerged from the crowd. He stared hard at the simplicity of her appearance, trying to fathom its meaning.
Disguising her emotion with mockery, she caught him by both hands. “What luck! I’ve been so lonely. Fancy meeting you here!” She laughed at him slyly through her lashes. She looked at his suit-case. “That all? Good. I wondered if you’d take me at my word.”
She moved round to the side on which he carried it, so that they had to walk a little apart In the courtyard, from among the gesticulating cochers, he selected a fiacre. As he helped her in he asked, “Where are we staying?”
“In the Rue St. Honoré at The Oxford and Cambridge; close by there are heaps of other hotels. You can easily find a good one.”
Again she surprised him; a fashionable hotel in the Place Vendôme was what he had expected.
They jingled off down sunlit boulevards. On tree-shadowed pavements tables were arranged in rows before cafés. Great buses lumbered by, drawn by stallions. Every sight and sound was noticeable and exciting. It was a world at whose meaning they could only guess; between it and themselves rose the barrier of language. Already the foreignness of their surroundings was forcing them together. They both felt it—felt it gladly; yet they sat restrained and awkward. None of their former unconventions gave them the least clews as to how they should act.
She turned inquisitive eyes on him. “Quite overcome, aren’t you? You didn’t expect to find such a modest little girl.—Tell me, Meester Deek, do you like the way I’m dressed?”
“Better than ever. But why——”