He took it for granted that she was a woman travelling for pleasure and likely to be back this way soon. While she gave a little inward sigh, wondering whether she would ever have the money to return to England, or if it would be her fate to live in exile for ever.
Sarle presented her with one of his simple maxims of life.
"All good citizens of the world should do everything once and once only," he averred, with his frank and disarming smile. "If we stuck to that rule life would never go stale on us."
"I'm afraid it would hardly apply to everyday life and all the weary things we have to do over and over again."
"I was thinking of the big things," he said slowly. "Like potting your first elephant or falling in love. I don't know what equivalents women have for these things."
April could not forbear a little ripple of laughter.
"I believe they fall in love, too, sometimes," she said. But Sarle, with his sea-blue gaze on her, answered gravely:
"I know very little about them."
It was hard to decide whether he was an expert flirt with new methods, or really and truly a man with a heart as guileless as his eyes. But, at any rate, he was amusing, and April forgot her tears and anger completely in the pleasant hour they spent together until the passengers, recalled by the ship's siren, began to return from ashore.
Diana and her bodyguard were the last to arrive, the men laden with fruit, flowers, and numerous parcels, and the girl more openly careless of the rest of the world than before. They took possession of a group of chairs that did not belong to them, and scattered their possessions upon the deck. Pomegranates, nectarines, and bananas began to roll in every direction, to the inconvenience of the passers-by, but what did that matter? Diana lit a cigarette, declaring that it was too hot for words, and that she must have a John Collins. They all ordered John Collinses. The handsome man fanned Diana with a large palm leaf, and she looked at him with languorous eyes.