"I want to believe," he said, "that you can listen to the music here and yet live upon the hilltops."
"You believe that it is possible?"
"I do indeed," he assured her. "Although my heart was almost sick with loneliness, I do not think that I should be here if I did not believe it. I have not come for anything else, for any lesser things, but to find—"
For once his courage failed him. For once, too, he failed to understand her expression. She had drawn back a little, her lips were quivering. Sophy broke suddenly in upon that moment of suspended speech.
"I knew how it would be!" she exclaimed. "I leave you both alone for less than a minute, and there you sit, as grave as two owls. I ask you, now, is this the place to wander off into the clouds? When two people sit looking at each other as you were doing a minute ago, here in Luigi's, at midnight, with champagne in their glasses, and a supper, ordered regardless of expense, on the table before them, they are either without the least sense of the fitness of things, or else—"
"Or else what?" Louise asked.
"Or else they are head over heels in love with each other!" Sophy concluded.
"Perhaps the child is right," Louise assented tolerantly, taking a peach from the basket by her side. "Evidently it is our duty to abandon ourselves to the frivolity of the moment. What shall we do to bring ourselves into accord with it? Everybody seems to be behaving most disgracefully. Do you think it would contribute to the gaiety of the evening if I were to join in the chorus of 'You Made Me Love You,' and Mr. Strangewey were to imitate the young gentleman at the next table and throw a roll, say, at that portly old gentleman with the highly polished shirt-front?"
"There is no need to go to extremes," Sophy protested. "Besides, we should get into trouble. The portly old gentleman happens to be one of the directors."
"Then we will just talk nonsense," Louise suggested.