"Yes, isn't it warm to-night?" said Eugenia, seeing that he was wiping his wet forehead with his handkerchief.
"Unseasonable, very," agreed Neale. He had turned sick with his recurrent panic lest she never come back. He ought to have taken that next train and gone right after her, as he wanted to.
The waiter brought the fish. It was not what Neale had ordered, but a more expensive variety. He looked somewhat apprehensively at the gentleman as he offered it, but the gentleman did not seem to notice. On this the waiter disappeared and brought back a bottle of wine, not the variety Neale had bargained for.
"Have you any news from Miss Allen?" asked Neale.
"Oh, no," said Eugenia, slightly surprised. "When she's coming back so soon, she probably doesn't see there's any need to write."
She began on the fish. After the first mouthful she said to Neale with enthusiasm, "You know how to order a dinner as well as to choose a table, that's evident."
"It was the first fish he proposed," said Neale.
Eugenia thought, "How much better breeding he has, after all, than Mr. Livingstone, always boasting of his savoir-faire."
Neale's thoughts were jumping incoherently from one thing to another. "Funny place Rome is, to be planning how to run a wood-working plant in Vermont. Funny change of direction, from planning to go out to China and the East, about-face to planning to settle down and take root. You wouldn't think that would appeal to a man who had had the idea of ranging the world a while longer, to tie himself...." This attempt at reasonable consideration of things vanished in an explosion of emotion, as if a spark had fallen into gunpowder. "Oh, if she will! If she will! Why didn't I make a chance to see her alone before she went away?"
Eugenia was talking about traveling. She had noticed Neale's interest in travels. "I'm thinking, Mr. Crittenden, of making a leisurely trip around the world—not one of those detestable, herded, conducted tours. And yet how else can I go about it? What would you do? I'm so ignorant of anything outside of Europe. I wish I had some one intelligent and enlightened to go with me. It's so forlorn to travel alone!"