"I like it."
She looked her most serio-comic disapproval and held up a forefinger with a warning little waggle to it.
"Please," she said, with an inlay of something deeper in her voice, "don't begin by spoiling things."
"Rather not," he said. "I'm going to live up to your letter of the law."
Except for the frequent conferences now in the new Forty-second Street offices that commanded a view of two rivers and a vast battledoor and shuttlecock of the city, it was the first time in all those years that stretched from the night at the Waldorf that they had sat thus tête-à-tête. The day of the move she had ridden up from the old Union Square offices with him, a stack of files in her lap. Once, too, on a Saturday, the day of Zoe's invariable luncheon downtown and subsequent opera matinee, he had strolled by what seemed mischievous chance into the tea room where they were dining, but the occasion had hardly been a success. There had been a great deal of badinage between him and Zoe, but Lilly had finished her meal almost in silence. The day following, a toy piano of complete range and really excellent workmanship had arrived. She returned it without showing it to Zoe. These incidents lay between them now.
"So this is where you live," he repeated, as if his long curiosity could not find satiety in fact.
"That I have an abode seems to amaze you."
"It does. You're such a detached sort. You rise so above the mundane things that clutter up life, that it is pretty much of a shock to realize that you use tooth powder and carry a latchkey. It's hard to reconcile Chopin and George Sand probably to those famous raw-meat sandwiches they loved to eat at midnight. Well, that's about the way I feel about you—hemmed in by—dull reality such as this."
"I like raw-meat sandwiches," she said.
"Me too."