She took his face between her hands and deliberately kissed him.
"That's just what I wanted to know, Julien," she declared. "Now shake hands, be off, and do the best you can for yourself. I wish you the best of luck, the very best. That's all we can say to one another, isn't it?"
"Quite all," he admitted.
"You are a dear, good fellow," she went on, "and I have been quite fond of you, although I think that I bored you now and then. I should have made you an excellent wife, perhaps a better one than I shall the next man who comes along. Don't stay any longer, there's a dear, because although I never pretended to have much heart, this sort of thing does upset one, you know, and I want to look my best to-night. Write me sometimes, if you will. I'd love to hear that you'd found some interest in life to help you gather up the threads. And here—this is for luck."
She took a little turquoise pin from her waistband and stuck it in his black tie. Then, before he could stop her, she touched the bell with one hand and gave him the other.
"Please kiss my fingers, Julien, and tell me I've behaved nicely."
He looked steadily into her eyes and then away out of the window, across the square. It was such a natural ending, this. It was foolish that his heart should shake, even for a second. And yet there had been one occasion—at Clonarty—when she had lain very close to him in his arms, and the moonlight had been falling through the pine trees in little dappled places around them, and the wind had been making faint music among the swinging boughs—for these few moments, at any rate, the other things had shone in her face. Were they illusions really, those moments of agitation, he wondered—simply one long, sensuous period passing like breath from a looking-glass and leaving nothing behind? He looked into her face. There was no sign there. Then he dropped the fingers which he had been holding. Women were wonderful!
"Do write," she begged, as she walked into the hall with him. "Dear me, what a strange-looking person you have with you in the taxicab!"
"He is a friend," Julien said quietly, "a journalist. I might say the same of the young man who is watching us from the drawing-room, Anne! Who is he?"
She made a little face at him and whispered in his ear.