“But your dinner!” she protested. “You will be so late.”
He laughed.
“You cannot seriously believe,” he said, “that at the present moment I care a snap of the fingers whether I have any dinner or not.”
She laughed.
“Well, you certainly did very well at tea,” she remarked. “If you really are going to wait, make yourself as comfortable as you can. There are cigarettes and magazines in the corner there.”
Anna disappeared, but Ennison did not trouble either the cigarettes or the magazines. He sat back in an easy chair with a hand upon each of the elbows, and looked steadfastly into the fire.
People spoke of him everywhere as a young man of great promise, a politician by instinct, a keen and careful judge of character. Yet he was in a state of hopeless bewilderment. He was absolutely unable to focus his ideas. The girl who had just left the room was as great a mystery to him now as on the afternoon when he had met her in Piccadilly and taken her to tea. And behind—there was Paris, memories of amazing things, memories which made his cheeks burn and his heart beat quickly as he sat there waiting for her. For the first time a definite doubt possessed him. A woman cannot change her soul. Then it was the woman herself who was changed. Anna was not “Alcide” of the “Ambassador’s,” whose subtly demure smile and piquant glances had called him to her side from the moment of their first meeting. It was impossible.
She came in while he was still in the throes, conviction battling with common-sense, his own apprehension. He rose at once to his feet and turned a white face upon her.
“I am going to break a covenant,” he cried. “I cannot keep silence any longer.”
“You are going to speak to me of things which happened before we met in London?” she asked quietly.