He placed his hat and a light bamboo stick across the center table, obviously oppressed with a sense of close quarters.
"Tell you what! Suppose we taxi over to Claremont. It's mild enough to sit out on the terrace."
She met him with her levelest gaze.
"Aren't you going to be comfortable here?"
"Of course I am. There you go, getting sensitive right off. Only it is a warmish evening, and why keep the sun-child awake?"
"Zoe can sleep," she said, with the barely perceptible arch to her brows, "even through the fire of your presence."
"Good!" he said, seating himself in great good nature and trying not to be quizzical. "So this is where you live."
He was frankly curious, his gaze humorous, but traveling over details, his head upflung and the scenting movement to his nostrils. He had not changed in weight, but in compactness and as if the house of his being had settled with a fine kind of firmness. He was a bit squarer of jaw and shoulder and ever so prematurely, and to the enormous fancy of women, inclined to a hoar frost of gray at the temples.
She seated herself across the little square of table.
"You don't seem to care for us here."