XXX
A few days after her decisive conversation with Raymond de Chelles, Undine, emerging from the doors of the Nouveau Luxe, where she had been to call on the newly-arrived Mrs. Homer Branney, once more found herself face to face with Elmer Moffatt.
This time there was no mistaking his eagerness to be recognized. He stopped short as they met, and she read such pleasure in his eyes that she too stopped, holding out her hand.
"I'm glad you're going to speak to me," she said, and Moffatt reddened at the allusion.
"Well, I very nearly didn't. I didn't know you. You look about as old as you did when I first landed at Apex—remember?"
He turned back and began to walk at her side in the direction of the
Champs Elysees.
"Say—this is all right!" he exclaimed; and she saw that his glance had left her and was ranging across the wide silvery square ahead of them to the congregated domes and spires beyond the river.
"Do you like Paris?" she asked, wondering what theatres he had been to.
"It beats everything." He seemed to be breathing in deeply the impression of fountains, sculpture, leafy' avenues and long-drawn architectural distances fading into the afternoon haze.
"I suppose you've been to that old church over there?" he went on, his gold-topped stick pointing toward the towers of Notre Dame.