"Oh, Nan dear, my new dress!"
"Me? Do you mean—did I do that? Oh, my! I'm most terribly sorry!"
"If I sponge it off instantly—" Greta rose. Nan rose.
Madge rose. "I'll help you," she said.
"Certainly not!" Miss Greta cast back a look not to be mistaken, and hurried off, holding her skirt out in front of her and looking at it with a very passion of concern.
Should he bolt after her? Ridiculous! How could he dog the steps of a woman going upstairs to sponge her frock!
Should he go outside and waylay the messenger? He hadn't even the flimsiest excuse, except one that wasn't producible, unless he could catch her red-handed. To catch her sending a note to Ernst Pforzheim, what would that prove? Wouldn't any of us in her place want to share such tremendous news with our compatriots, let alone with a lover?
She was away less than eleven minutes. Napier timed her. When she came back she had on a different skirt and a subtly different expression. Whatever had been on her mind as well as on her dress, she had got rid of both. The others still argued and speculated. The staggering news was new to them. Curiously, it was already old to Napier, old and grim and implacable. He shoved it wearily aside. While Miss Greta's head was bent and she thought him covertly eyeing her, Napier drank refreshment out of the face at her side. The little girl from over the water, what was it she did to him? The mystery of these things.
Napier took Julian out on the terrace to cool off, though he said it was to smoke. "I say, day and night for over a week I've heard nothing but war. Talk to me about something pleasant," he said. It was a plain lead, but Julian was a mole of a man.
"What do you call pleasant in a world like this?"