Paliser abandoned his cigarette. "If you like, we might look in at the Metropolitan. I believe I have a box."
Apart from down-stage and the centre of it, apart, too, from the flys and the dressing-rooms, Cassy's imagination had not as yet conceived anything more beckoning than a box at the opera, even though, as on this occasion, the opera happened to be a concert. "Why, yes. Only——" Pausing, she looked about. The imperial lady had gone.
"Only what?" Paliser very needlessly asked for he knew.
"I fear I am a bit overdressed."
"Not for Sunday. The house will be full and nobody in it. Besides, what do you care?"
Cassy shrugged. "Personally, not a rap. It was of you I was thinking."
Paliser, who had been signing the check and feeing the waiter, looked at her. "I did not know that you were so considerate."
Cassy, in surprise not at him, but at herself, laughed. "Nor did I."
Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."
The platitude slipped from him absently. He had no wish for the concert, no wish to hear Berlinese trulls and bubonic bassi bleat. But, for the tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to conjecture.