“I know,” he admitted after a little pause, “time seems to lag a bit. But after all, what’s six months?”
“Or even a year?” she bravely supplemented, catching somewhat the spirit of his easy nonchalance.
It was, as a matter of fact, a trifle in the air: the Captain’s was a complicated life. “If I’m not here—h’m?—by the fifteenth of August,” he had told them, “or within a week of that time—h’m?—you’ll know I’m not to be looked for until February again.” But they refused to be dismayed.
“Yes, even a year,” King echoed her gaily. “A year’s gone in no time. And then,” he laughed, “if we can’t stand it any longer, why off we go, to some place more lively—maybe where we can live in a cheerful, noisy little two-by-twice flat with a dumb waiter and—”
“But you said—the rue de la Paix,” she reminded him, a look of groping alarm in her eyes.
“Ah, so I did.” He sighed a cheerful capitulation; and then, with an odd effect of pulling himself together and getting romantically “under way” once more, noisily pushed back his chair, got up, and poured out some more brandy. “You’re right, lady-bird. I’d forgotten about the hats. All right—it’s really quite the same. We’ll go to Paris! And after that—perhaps the Tyrol you’re always talking about. Or—I’ve got it! We’ll saunter up the coast of Africa, through the Suez canal, into the blue Mediterranean. Maybe you’ll want to go on to Spain....”
He strode to a window and brushed back the mat roughly, seeming, as he stood there, to drift miles away, while the blow outside waned, and the jungle hushed itself beneath warm stars.
The troubled look returned to Stella’s eyes. “Oh, don’t stop—please!” she urged. And it came to her dimly that this was really the first time she had had, consciously, to prod his grandeur.
IV
Next morning it was still and sunny. Silence drifted softly in from all sides through the aching beauty of this tiny empire.