She looked very pale and anxious as she explained all this so that Livingstone was deeply touched. But he wondered what she thought he could do about it.
"I'm really ashamed, now I've come to the point, to ask you what I thought. But I will—and if you think it too preposterous—more than I have any right to—it's this. To take a pocket full of money (I don't care what it costs) and go up to the frontier station and when it comes along, bribe it through the inspectors. You see, Mr. Livingstone, it's something that not everybody could manage, even with ever so much money. But you understand the European mentality so perfectly. It would need to be done with just the right manner.... Oh, no, no," she broke off abruptly, getting up from her chair. "What a thing to dream of asking any one to do! What claim have I on your...?"
Livingstone, blinking joyfully, sprang up too, protesting that nothing would amuse and interest him more than such a mission. And for her, any mission would be his joy!
"Well, think it over. Let me know to-night. I'm ashamed to have mentioned it," she said in confusion. "I don't know how I dared. But oh Mr. Livingstone, I am so troubled about it. And I am so alone! No one on whom to...." She had gone, murmuring apologies, touched by his instant response, leaving Livingstone as much moved and agitated as she.
She went through into her own rooms and told Joséphine, "Put those manicure things away for the time being. I must go out to do a bit of shopping. But you can have them ready at ten. I'll be back by that time. It won't take me long."
Neale stood, frowning and looking at his watch, waiting for Eugenia to come down from the ladies' dressing-room and have dinner. As he fidgeted about, looking glumly at the brilliant scene about him, he was wondering with inward oaths of exasperation what in hell could be the matter with anybody's clothes and hair after the slight exertion of sitting perfectly still in a cab from the door of the pension to the door of the restaurant. It was not, God knew, that he was impatient to have her join him. It was because he was in a steady fever of impatience to have everything over, the evening, the day, the night—to put back of him another of those endless, endless days—to be one day nearer to the time when Marise would return.
"What?" he said irritably to the smooth-voiced waiter who now approached him with an intimate manner. "Oh, I don't care which table!"
"Here, sir, is one right by the edge of the terrace, where the view is finest," said the waiter in excellent English. "Perhaps the lady would like a screen. There is occasionally a draught from below."
He hastened to set a small screen, to rearrange fussily the handsome silver and linen on the daintily-set table, to slant the single fine rose in the vase at another angle.