'Climate, climate,' she was saying—'how is it that people worship money and brains and beauty, and never worship climate, which is the one thing in the world that matters? Of course, you don't think that, because you live in New York, which is unbearable three-quarters of the year and intolerable the rest—isn't that it?—and get accustomed to doing without climate, just as you train oysters to live out of water until you are ready to eat them. But to me nothing but climate is really of any importance. I am so much better than when I came here; and I was quite well when I came,' she added.
'It seems to have suited Charlie Brancepeth very well,' said Bilton.
'Yes, he's much better; soon he'll be quite well. He gets more like you, Mr. Bilton, as he regains his health, every day. It really is very odd, because I don't suppose two people were ever so unlike in character. But the climate here has been good for your character as well as Charlie's lungs.'
'Have I improved? I'm delighted to hear it. I thought I was a hopeless case.'
'Not at all—no more hopeless than Charlie. You have developed a side your character which I hardly suspected you of having, and are beginning to take perfectly frivolous pursuits with great seriousness. You were much more annoyed at losing ten seconds to-day in that spill than you were at losing your cigarette-case.'
'I have been a pupil, that's all,' he said; 'I have been well taught since I have been here.'
'Tanti complimenti,' said she. 'Really, when you came I was afraid you would be absorbed in telegrams and bargains and bulls and bears. But you have not; you have played very nicely. How much longer do you stop?'
They had come to the hotel, and were passing the big squares of light cast by the hall windows. He dropped the rope of his toboggan as she asked this, and stopped to pick it up, looking her full in the face.
'I shall go when I am told,' he said—' not a day before.' She looked at him, and understood. It was the first personal word he had said to her since the little interview on her arrival, but it was so modest again, so self-obliterating, that it did not offend her with a sense that he had broken his word when he promised not to speak to her again on intimate subjects. It was sufficient to remind him of it very gently, just to cool him off, so to speak.
'We should all miss you, I am sure,' she said.