“When was the first?”
“That night at the Knickerbocker after we’d quarreled and I’d given you the bracelet.”
She smiled in amused contentment “How you do keep count!”
The band had ceased playing; only the music of the fountains was heard. Shadows beneath trees deepened. Constellations of street-lamps lengthened. Twilight came tiptoeing softly, like a young-faced woman with silver hair.
She hung upon his arm more heavily. “Oh, it’s good to be alone with you! You don’t mind if I don’t talk? One can talk with anybody.” And, a little later, “Meester Deek, I feel so safe alone with you.”
When they were back in thoroughfares, “Where shall we dine?” he asked her.
“In your world,” she said. “No, don’t let’s drive. This isn’t New York. We’d miss all the adventure. I’d rather walk now.”
After wandering the Boule Michel, losing their way half-a-dozen times and making inquiries in their guide-book French, they found the Café d’Harcourt. Its walls were decorated with student-drawings by artists long since famous. At a table in the open they seated themselves. Romance was all about them. It danced in the eyes of men and girls. Through the orange-tinted dusk it lisped along the pavement It winked at them through the blinds of pyramided houses.
She bent towards him. “You’ve become very respectful—not at all the Meester Deek that you were—more like a little boy on his best behavior.”
He rested his chin in his hand. “Naturally.”